Redwood: The Story Behind the Scenery

Book Description

Stand quietly in the ancient forest. Massive gray columns reach through the silent, silvery mist, encouraging the eye skyward into a deep emerald ceiling. Here, one comes to know the wonder of time everlasting.

Redwood National and State Parks, located in northern California, were established throughout the 20th century to preserve the coastal redwood forests, including some of the world's tallest trees.

Redwood: The Story Behind the Scenery
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Redwood: The Story Behind the Scenery
Richard A. Rasp
Manufacturer: KC Publications, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0887148131

Product Description

A translation package consists of a complete translation bound within the English book.

A Traveller's History of India (3rd edition)
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A succinct and compelling history of India

Worth it if you're going to India

A Traveller's History of India (3rd edition)
Sinharaja Tammita-Delgoda
Manufacturer: Interlink Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

India | Asia | History | Subjects | Books | Ancient
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India - Culture Smart!: a quick guide to customs and etiquette (Culture Smart!)

India India

A Traveller's History of China (Traveller's Histories Series)

ASIN: 156656445X

Book Description

India, named after the river Indus, is heir to one of the world's oldest and richest civilizations and the origin of many of the ideas, philosophies, and movements that have shaped the destiny of humankind.

For the traveler, India is both an inspiration and a challenge. The sheer wealth of Indian culture has fascinated generations of visitors. We see the sweeping panorama of Indian history, from the ancient origins of Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and the other great religions, through the tumultuous political history of India's epic struggle against colonialism, to the ravages of Partition, Non-Alignment, and, finally, the emergence of India as a powerful modern state still grounded in the literature and culture of an ancient land. A Traveller's History of India covers the whole scope of India's past and present history and allows the reader to make sense of what they see in a way that no other guide book can.

Customer Reviews:

A succinct and compelling history of India.......2002-04-20

After reading V.S. Naipaul's "An Area of Darkness" about his first journey to India, I felt that I needed a more balanced view of the country. This book was just what was called for.

"A Traveller's History of India" was written by a historian from Sri Lanka with an English education. He knows how to give a good overview of the various cultural influences that met and merged in India. His narrative is chronological. It is the best way to illustrate the growth, glory, decline and disappearance of vast empires. It also serves well to refute the Naipaulian idea that there is something particularly evil about the Muslim influence in India. The Islamic believers who invaded India in the 7th century AD shared many things with the Aryan invaders 1500 BC or the Christian invaders in the 18th century AD: they all came, conquered, prospered and some of their influence continues until today. The Aryans brought the caste system and Sanskrit literature; the Muslims built the Taj Mahal, and gave birth to the Urdu language; the Christians built railroads, left a working legal system and administration, and English as a common language that was understood in the whole subcontinent.

In one aspect, however, the Islamic invaders were more ruthless than the others. No other invading culture erased a religion as barbarously as Islam uprooted Buddhism in India: "The conquest of Bihar [in 1202 AD] saw the systematic destruction of all the remaining Buddhist monasteries and the wanton slaughter of all the monks. [...] The ruthless fanaticism of the new conquerors led to the complete disappearance of Buddhism from the land of its birth."

On the other hand, the Muslims exported the decimal system and the symbol zero from India to Europe, both of which later played a crucial role in the development of Western science.

Sinharaja Tammita-Delgoda strikes a fair balance between the failures and the successes of the cultures that came to play a role in India. And he has a fine sense of irony when it comes to the impact of the English on India. He notes that the Indian nationalist movement which began in the mid 19th century had its origins in a common identity and a new sense of purpose instilled by the new political and social ideas carried with the English language; and he observes that the discoveries of many British scholars who made it their life's work to unearth the story of India's ancient past gave Indians an important sense of their own identity and a feeling of pride in their past.

I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this history of India. My greatest delight - and inspiration to do further research and reading - were succinct portraits like the one of Babur (1483-1530 AD), who was not only the founder of the Muslim Mughal empire but also "one of its most fascinating and attractive personalities. A poet and a man of letters, he was also an adventurer of iron nerves and powerful determination. A keen diarist, he recorded his experiences in his memoirs, the Tuzuk-i-Baburi, which are an important source for the history of the period. These memoirs speak of a tremendous zest for life, a man of boundless energy and optimism, a dedicated drunkard and a wholehearted sportsman and polo player. They also reveal an artistic nature of great sensitivity and refinement. Wherever he went Babur laid out Persian gardens, and his memoirs are full of references to the beauties of nature. Cold-blooded and ruthless at times, he was also capable of great generosity and chivalry, and his memories are laced with that rare quality - an endearing sense of humour."

Worth it if you're going to India.......2000-12-14

Lots of historical information. Easy to read. A must for your trip to India.

Delhi & Agra: A Travellers' Companion (Hutchinson Novella)

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Delhi & Agra: A Travellers' Companion (Hutchinson Novella)

Manufacturer: Constable
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Asia | History | Subjects | Books

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Delhi and Agra (The Travellers' Companion Series)

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Delhi and Agra (The Travellers' Companion Series)

Manufacturer: Constable and Robinson
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0094677409

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European Travellers In India
Edwd Farley Oaten
Manufacturer: Hesperides Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Hesperides Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

The First Englishmen in India: Letters and Narratives of Sundry Elizabethans written by themselves (Broadway Travellers)

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The First Englishmen in India: Letters and Narratives of Sundry Elizabethans written by themselves (Broadway Travellers)
J. Locke
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Essays & Travelogues | Reference & Tips | Travel | Subjects | Books

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Letters & Correspondence | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0415344743

Book Description

First published in 1930. This volume contains letters and narratives of some of the Elizabethans who went to India. Here the beginnings of the British Indian Empire can be seen, arising out of the trading operations of the East India Company.

Goa: A Travellers Historical and Architectural Guide

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Goa: A Travellers Historical and Architectural Guide
Antony Hutt
Manufacturer: Scorpion Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Himalayan Journals I: Scientific Travellers, 1789-1874 (Scientific Travellers 1790-1877)

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Himalayan Journals I: Scientific Travellers, 1789-1874 (Scientific Travellers 1790-1877)
Joseph Hooker
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0415289343

Book Description

The travels and publications of Joseph Hooker, author of the Himalayan Journals, are inextricably tied to British colonialism and Empire-building. Travelling in his role as director of the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, he collected about 7,000 species in India and Nepal, added 25 new rhododendron species to Kew (creating a rhododendron craze among British gardeners), and brought over samples of both rubber and quinine from the Amazon. Hooker dedicated these Journals to his close friend Charles Darwin. Contents of this work--reprinted here in two parts--include many pictures and foldout maps of the areas covered by his travels.

Himalayan Journals II: Scientific Travellers, 1789-1874 (Scientific Travellers, 1790-1877)

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Himalayan Journals II: Scientific Travellers, 1789-1874 (Scientific Travellers, 1790-1877)
Joseph Hooker
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

History of Science | History & Philosophy | Science | Subjects | Books

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Mountains | Nature & Ecology | Science | Subjects | Books

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General | Travel | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0415289351

Book Description

History Of India: Historic Accounts Of India By Foreign Travellers Classic, Oriental And Occidental

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History Of India: Historic Accounts Of India By Foreign Travellers Classic, Oriental And Occidental
Lyall. A. C.
Manufacturer: Asian Educational Services
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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India And Its Faiths - A Traveller's Record

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India And Its Faiths - A Traveller's Record
James Bissett Pratt
Manufacturer: Chapman Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Book Description

INDIA AND ITS FAITHS A TRAVELERS RECORD BY JAMES BISSETT PRATT, PH. D. FROPBSSOR OP PHILOSOPHY IN WILLIAMS COLLBGK AUTHOR OF THB PSYCHOLOGY OP RELIGIOUS BBLXRP WHAT is PRAGMATISM With Illustrations BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY AiUgtjtfftit pEtjrf 4Tambrib0t 1915 COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY JAMBS BISSETT PRATT ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published November ONE O THE GOPURAMS Al 1 HIRUKLIKUNDRUM TO MY DEAR COMRADE IN INDIA AND IN LIFE AT WHOSE SUGGESTION THIS BOOK WAS BEGUN AND BY WHOSE ASSISTANCE IT WAS COMPLETED Passage soul to India t Eclair cise the myths Asiatic, the primitive fables. Not you alone, proud truths of the world, Nor you alone, ye facts of modern science, But myths and fables of eld, Asias, Africas fables, The far-darting beams of the spirit, the unloosed dreams, The deep diving bibles and legends, The daring plots of the poets, the elder religions you temples fairer than lilies pourd over by the rising sun you fables spurning the known, eluding the hold of the known, mounting to heaven I Passage indeed soul to primal thought, Not lands and seas alone, thy own clear freshness, The young maturity of brood and bloom, To realms of budding bibles. Passage to more than India Are thy wings plumed indeed for such far flights soul, voyagest thou indeed on voyages like those Disportest thou on waters such as those Soundest below the Sanscrit and the Vedas Then have thy bent unleashed. Passage to you, your shores, ye aged fierce enigmas Passage to you, to mastership of you, ye strangling problems t You, strewd with the wrecks of skeletons, that, living, never reachd you. Passage to more than India WALT WHITMAN. PREFACE IF there is room for a new book on India and its faiths, that certainly is not due to any lack of learned and excellent treatments of the subject already obtainable. And the only excuse I shall offer for adding to a long list is that I have sought to deal with the subject from a point of view different from that of most writers, and that I have found my interest center ing on aspects of Indias religious life not often emphasized in our books upon that land. I am neither a Sanskritist nor a missionary nor a convert to some Oriental cult and that per haps constitutes my chief qualification for writing on India. For I have had no axe to grind, and my interest has been cen tered on existing conditions, on present-day ideas and their significance, and on the methods used by the different commu nities of India for religious education and religious reform. In spite, therefore, of the many excellent works that have been written on India, I conceive that there is still a place for a book whose authors preparation for his task has been, not in San skrit or missionary literature, but in the study of the general problems of the psychology and philosophy of religion, and who seeks to present Indian religious life as it is to-day, without partisanship or antecedent bias. When I started for India it was with no thought of writing a book on the land and its faiths, but to gain fresh light on the psychology of religion a subject that had interested me for a dozen years. Before I had been long in the country, however, I found I had col lected, from observation and from conversation with all sorts of people, a considerable amount of information concerning the religions of India which seemed to me most interesting and which I, at least, had not found in books and my wife suggested that what had brought new insight to me might be of interest to others also. Hence the writing of this book. Of the photographs used as illustrations all but one were taken by myself. The pictures of Krishna and of Kali are from common prints sold for a few annas all over India. These ix

Book Description

This book presents the first biography written in English of the famous Babylonian lawgiver, King Hammurabi, who ruled from 1792 to 1750 BC. It presents a well-rounded view of this ancient Mesopotamian king 's accomplishments, by drawing on the extensive writings of his time, including those by Hammurabi himself. Numerous letters and reports by ambassadors to his court and others are presented in translation.Marc Van De Mieroop traces Hammurabi 's career as a diplomat and conqueror, describing how he dealt with powerful rivals and extended his kingdom to create the large state of Babylon. He explores the administration of the kingdom and looks at the legacies of Hammurabi 's rule, especially his legal code, the earliest complete body of legal instructions in world history.The book demonstrates how Hammurabi 's conquests irrevocably changed the political organization of the Middle East and shows that Hammurabi was long remembered by the ancient Mesopotamians as one of the greatest kings of the past.

Customer Reviews:

Land Between the Rivers.......2007-04-13

This is a great biography of an important king of ancient Mesopotamia. The book puts into a historical context the life and times of the King who created the famous "Law Code of Hammurabi". If you are interested in the ancient history of a region unfamiliar to most people, I would recomend this book.

Limbo: A Memoir
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Stands apart from the books which try to find meaning in difficulty

"The abyss opens beneath our feet . . . ."

The Land Beyond the Abyss

lyrical and dispassionate

Atypical Memoir

Limbo: A Memoir
A. Manette Ansay
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Vinegar Hill (Oprah's Book Club (Paperback))

ASIN: 0380732874
Release Date: 2002-09-17

Amazon.com

A. Manette Ansay, the author of such well-received novels as Midnight Champagne and River Angel, didn't set out to be a writer, but a concert pianist. In this affecting memoir, she tells what happened to change her course.

In early adulthood, having spent years practicing at the keyboard, Ansay was felled by a mysterious illness that robbed her of motor control--and, soon, her ability to walk. Ailments of unknown origin weren't uncommon among her fellow students, she writes, for musical training is far more punishing physically than nonmusicians might imagine, and moments of respite are rare--reason enough to take ill. Even so, this malady stumped her doctors and drove her into a doubting self-examination through which she concluded that her illness was a test of faith devised by a stern but not unloving God; "just because you can't find the reason doesn't mean it isn't there." The loss of her physical strength and musical calling were tough tests, she writes, but life would toss tougher ones her way over the years, and to gauge by this memoir she has met them well. Ansay touches on matters of courage, faith, and bewilderment before arriving at a nicely optimistic conclusion. For, she writes, despite it all, despite having been confined to a wheelchair for nearly half her life, the good has far outweighed the bad, a happy instance of "that precarious balance that drives us to value what we have, to cling to the world as we do."

Gracefully written and full of small epiphanies, Limbo will prove a pleasure for Ansay's many loyal readers, and for those new to her work. --Gregory McNamee

Book Description

From childhood, acclaimed novelist A. Manette Ansay trained to become a concert pianist. But when she was nineteen, a mysterious muscle disorder forced her to give up the piano, and by twenty-one, she couldn't grip a pen or walk across a room. She entered a world of limbo, one in which no one could explain what was happening to her or predict what the future would hold.

At twenty-three, beginning a whole new life in a motorized wheelchair, Ansay made a New Year's resolution to start writing fiction, rediscovering the sense of passion and purpose she thought she had lost for good.

Thirteen years later, still without a firm diagnosis or prognosis, Ansay reflects on the ways in which the unraveling of one life can plant the seeds of another, and considers how her own physical limbo has challenged—in ways not necessarily bad—her most fundamental assumptions about life and faith.

Luminously written, Limbo is a brilliant and moving testimony to the resilience of the human spirit.

Customer Reviews:

Stands apart from the books which try to find meaning in difficulty.......2006-08-21

There are those who easily turn to their religion to find comfort in the midst of nearly any difficulty. Then there are those who REFUSE to do so and who are able to find their way through the pain anyway.
Ansay falls into the latter group (and I want to be clear here,...I'm not saying one viewpoint is better than the other, only pointing out the facts).
She is quite honest about her unwillingness (or inability) to make that choice for herself. She is faced with a mysterious illness and no guarantee of recovery. She may be in a wheelchair all her life. She is young.
THe result? A book about how she comes to grips with all of this WITHOUT insisting on finding "meaning" or a sense that she was destined for this or that there is some deeper significance or spiritual pattern in her illness.
If you know someone in a similar circumstance, someone for whom religion is not an easy comfort and who wonders how others have coped, this would be a perfect choice. It is also worth reading by just about anyone who wonders "What if?" or "How would I handle this?". Honest, detailed and unflinching.

"The abyss opens beneath our feet . . . .".......2006-01-08

In "Limbo," a memoir by A. Manette Ansay, the author remembers growing up in the sixties and seventies, for the most part, with fondness. Although Ann's traditional Catholic upbringing gave her nightmares on more than one occasion, the strict rules and routines that governed her life made her feel secure. When her parents took her to Wisconsin, she got to know her large extended family, which included sixty-seven cousins. As a youngster, Ann enjoyed physical activity of any sort. She loved to run, jump, and wrestle, and she even did sit-ups and push-ups when she was in elementary school.

One of the great loves of Ann's life was music. She took piano lessons for years and practiced for hours each day. She became so proficient that she was eventually admitted to the prestigious Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore. Tragically, her promising musical career was cut short when physical symptoms that she had been battling for years suddenly grew worse. She suffered from intense pain in her arms and legs, and the doctors she consulted could not agree on a diagnosis. She tried cortisone shots, anti-inflammatory drugs, splints, braces, surgery, hypnosis, and many other treatments. Nothing cured her, although there were times when she could walk under her own power for short distances. However, because of the pain in her arms, Ann knew that she had to give up her dream of becoming a concert pianist. After much soul searching, she eventually turned to writing.

"Limbo" is an episodic memoir that goes back and forth in time. The shifts are sometimes too sudden and they give the book a choppy feel. In addition, it is a bit confusing when Ansay uses the present tense to describe events long past. However, her descriptive writing is vivid, lyrical, and evocative. She uses creative imagery to depict the people she has known and the experiences that have shaped her life. The author includes in her memoir engrossing anecdotes about a wide variety of topics, including her troubled Grandmother Ansay, the way that Chaim Potok's novel, "The Chosen" changed her view of the world, her ambivalence about religion, and her childhood worries and escapades.

The book is most affecting when Ann talks about her illness and how it transformed her. She attended and completed college, even though she was unable to take notes or written exams. Strangers stared and pointed at her in her wheelchair or made rude comments about her disability, such as, "You've got it easy--the rest of us have to walk." However, the illness brought Ann closer to her parents, especially her mother, who was an invaluable asset to her sick daughter. In 1986, Ann's mother took her on a seven-hour drive to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota every six weeks for treatments.

Today, Ansay is a successful writer, and she has come to terms with her condition. She says, "It's a good life, made up of the people I love, the novels I've written and those I plan to write . . . ." Her persistence, determination, and resilience are inspiring, and I recommend "Limbo" for those who are interested in a true story of courage and grace under pressure.

The Land Beyond the Abyss.......2005-04-28

"The abyss opens beneath our feet, and we leap it,
*not* because we are particularly brave, but simply
because we must. We land in a whole new country. We
put on its clothing, learn its customs, begin again .
. . ."

This book is the saga of one person's approach to the
abyss, her eventual leap, and the long process of
resettlement in the "whole new country" -- a locale in
which she resides with grace and wisdom.

The book is also a succinct autobiography,
selective in its particulars. While it begins and ends with the author's transition to chronic disability, its substantial midsection constitutes one long flashback to her most
formative years. In these pages, she allows us ever so gradually past the periphery and closer to the essence of her active, exploratory childhood and her "good-girl" adolescence in the small community of Port Washington, Wisconsin.

Especially subtle and well-crafted
are the evolving portraits of the most influential
people in her life: the feisty, sometimes fiery
immigrant grandparents; the mother who drives long
distances (often through the chilliest northern landscapes, in an unheated car) to deliver the author
to the best available music lessons; perhaps most endearing, in the end, the taciturn breadwinner-father
-- for it is her father's story, once his speech begins to flow in the face of his daughter's suffering, that ultimately anchors, even permits the telling of, her own story. As Ansay flowers into full personhood, becoming ever more accessible and sympathetic to the reader -- so does he: a man whose life was,likewise, disrupted and derailed by serious illness in his youth. They share a certain resigned if sorrowful firsthand knowledge, as well as a deep camaraderie, borne of their historical social isolation and gratuitous suffering

As the author recounts her life, she mentions almost in passing -- confessing to what she seems to
consider an amateurish avocation -- that she has written some poetry early on. However modest she herself may consider those early efforts, a fine poetic sensibility is evident throughout the description of her odyssey to the edge
of the abyss and beyond: the rhythmic flow and careful patterning of her prose, her well-honed capacity for understatement and nuance.

No doubt her writing has also been influenced by her
long and rigorous training in music. Until she is
stricken by the still-undiagnosed (demyelinating?)
disorder that forces her to leave the Peabody
Conservatory and abandon her longtime dream -- a career as a concert pianist -- music is her daily regimen, even obsession. It becomes her spiritual sustenance as well: "the purest language I knew, the bridge between what I was supposed to believe and what I knew in my heart to be true." The transition to a whole new language -- to literature and the writing of novels -- becomes her ultimate redemption and salvation; inevitably, her first language informs her second.

It is that first and dearest language -- the hours of grueling piano practice -- the push for a better instrument, a better instructor, a scholarship -- that carries her safely through the Port Washington years. Even in childhood, though, we see evidence of other strengths, such as her keen observational powers, her sensitivity to sensory input. We see through her young eyes the lush checkerboard of Wisconsin farmland, viewed from a child's perch on a bicylcle -- the squares reflecting the whole ordered lifestyle of immigrant farmers, the clearly delineated boundaries of their industrious and God-fearing moral code. We come to know, too, through the author's neurons and receptors, the omnipresence of Lake Michigan in its many moods; at a certain season, mentally strolling its beaches beside her, we can almost inhale the rich rankness of the alewives.

We also come to see how asphyxiating a small community can be in terms of its moral strictures -- its church-bound preoccupations -- and we catch glimpses of its predictably sinister underbelly. Ansay writes of growing up amid a vast, extended Catholic family, primarily originating in Luxembourg and Germany. The somewhat monolithic family, the insular and even xenophobic community (its first Jewish family arrives during Ansay's eighties-childhood, but soon returns to the city) impresses upon her relentlessly the obligation not to make waves, never to stand out too noticeably or think too highly of oneself.

Thus, as she navigates an adolescence both gifted and
repressed, it seems somewhat inevitable that resentful classmates take to terrorizing
her -- threatening gross punishments (assault, even rape) for her alleged aloofness or visible self-regard; bringing her to fear she may not even make it to graduation before she is annihilated. Her descriptions of the high school sociopaths who lurk in the shadows, of the horrifying notes slipped anonymously into her locker, will ring true for everyone who has ever been bullied in school -- for every woman or girl who has dared not to apologize for intellectual excellence or
outstanding achievment.

In fact, though she doesn't say so explicitly,
the creepy two-bit persecution Ansay recounts from her high school years is probably good preparation for her later encounters with adult-aged creeps and insensates -- with the whole gallery of unthinking, gaping, sometimes reproving or sermonizing strangers who tend to assail a visibly disabled person wherever she goes, intruding on her privacy and dignity with their endless repertoire of bizarre questions and surreal remarks.

By the time Ansay reaches her twenties -- an
expatriate Catholic with severe new medical limitations,
reconciling herself to assistive devices such as wheel
chairs and power scooters -- she seems eminently well
equipped to deal with such individuals. She dispatches
them with a wonderful, dry, ironic sense of humor that
had me laughing and reading passages out loud to those
few people in my own life who might understand. The
smarmy, patronizing salesman; the man in the cultish
pain management program whose hand she would rather
not be holding during Twelve-Step-esque vespers; the
intrusive evangelist who speaks to her of throwing away her wheel chair -- all are fair game for Ansay's droll, subtle, devastating wit.

This memoir properly belongs to the genre of
such outstanding works as Nancy Mairs's *Waist-High in
the World,* Oliver Sacks's *A Leg to Stand On,* and
the wonderful New Yorker piece by Laura Hillenbrand
(author of *Seabiscuit*), "A Sudden Illness -- How My
Life Changed.* It might be read especially
appropriately as a complement to the fine expository
volume and research study *When Walking Fails* by Lisa
Iezzoni, a distinguished Harvard health researcher and
veteran of MS.

All refugees -- abyss-leapers, entrants into the
wilderness -- must typically limit their luggage
severely, settling on a few spare, precious remnants
they will transport into that whole new country.

This spare, poetic, insightful memoir --
marked up in black ballpoint and yellow highlighter,
extruding additional notes and comments on multiple
rainbow-Post-Its -- elegantly truthful, no matter how
hard the truths -- calmly, sometimes delightfully companionable in its recounting of familiar interpersonal misunderstandings at once horrific and hilarious -- is definitely one of my own essentials, to be tucked into my specially lightweight backpack or that small, handy storage space just under the seat of my walker.

Elizabeth Rasche Gonzalez
Medical/Legal Writing & Editorial Services
Chicago, Illinois
Email: poetryperson@sbcglobal.net

The author is a longtime medical writer and midlife law graduate (admitted to the bar in 1994). Since 1997, she has been disabled by defective spinal hardware, surgically implanted to correct scoliosis. In the past five years, she has undergone six additional spinal revision surgeries. Elizabeth owns and manages a 488-member forum for other adults with scoliosis who are coping with ongoing problems arising from Harrington rod instrumentation: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FeistyScolioFlatbackers

lyrical and dispassionate.......2002-05-11

Since writing my own memoir, BABY CATCHER: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife (Scribner 2002), I have been studying the style of other memorists. I found Ansay's prose lyrical, mesmerizing, and almost poetic throughout this beautiful book. To be able to write about her losses as a result of a still-mysterious illness similar to MS, with calmness and lack of hyperbole, is admirable and enviable. From the very beginning you know this story doesn't have a happy outcome, but at no time did I feel depressed. On some level, I rejoiced for this author, for her own successes and insight and hope and the joy in small gains, small triumphs over her difficulties. Limbo is a love story, an admirable one. I wish this author lived next door to me. I would sit at her feet in awe and bake her cookies and bread at every opportunity. May she continue to write and write and write.

Atypical Memoir.......2002-04-05

I enjoyed this book, for the most part. Ansay is best when she addresses her disease. This is an atypical memoir, as most memoirs concerning diseases have the following pattern: I was healthy; I became ill with a specific disease (or addicted, alcoholic, etc.); I recovered. Ansay is courageous in showing us a less "hopeful" situation. To this day, she does not have a specific diagnosis of her affliction, and not only has she not recovered, she is realistic in revealing that she may never recover. She writes about what her day-to-day life is like, and that it may never change. She also honestly writes about peoples' different reactions to her in a wheelchair; many had the gall to ask what was wrong, and others were wondering what she must have done "wrong" in a past life "to deserve this"! No one would just let her have the disease, plain and simple, and go on with her life. She shows that she is more than her disease; she is a sensitive, open writer. As other critics have noted (Sontag, etc), for some reason, our society demands that illness must have meaning. Ansay is explaining, in this memoir, that it just is what it is.

Life In Limbo: Waiting for a Heart Transplant

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Life In Limbo
Life In Limbo
The Best of Times, the Worst of Times
Touched my heart

Life In Limbo: Waiting for a Heart Transplant
Lisa Stiles Nance
Manufacturer: iUniverse.com
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Similar Items:

Stories of the Heart: Reflections on the Heart Transplant Journey : Stories of Hope and Inspiration
Dying to Live: From Heart Transplant to Abundant Life
The Grateful Heart: Diary of a Heart Transplant
Every Second Counts: The Race to Transplant the First Human Heart

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Braun IRT 4020 ThermoScan Ear Thermometer

ASIN: 0595297722

Book Description

"Life is about opposites coming together to make you whole." Lisa Nance takes us on a journey of love and faith as she travels the tumultuous terrain of her husband's six-month wait for a heart transplant. It feels as if one day she's enjoying a round of golf with a seemingly healthy spouse, then the next she's at his bedside in the ICU. Now, she must face "the Wait," with a capital W, tackling the challenges of single parenting, running the family business, and visiting a terminally ill husband 500 miles away. A beautifully written, insightful, and honest account of the lessons learned by a woman living a Life In Limbo.

Customer Reviews:

Life In Limbo.......2003-12-28

Nance is unbelievably honest in sharing her innermost feelings and thoughts throughout this book. She shows us that through faith, family and friends there is always a "light at the end of the tunnel". Her poetry adds a special touch to her story. I was especially moved by "Last Kiss". This book will be an inspiration for anyone facing a medical crisis.

Life In Limbo.......2003-12-23

Life In Limbo is a priceless gift for anyone going through a transplant with a loved one and a touching story for anyone that's not. Through Lisa Nance's intimate account of what she and her family endured we learn what it takes to survive a catastrophic life changing event. Life In Limbo will touch your heart in such a true and honest way that you should give this book to everyone you care about.

The Best of Times, the Worst of Times.......2003-12-20

Lisa Stiles Nance has had the courage, tenacity, and faith to survive one of life's more terrifying experiences -- and the talent and artistry to share with us the wisdom that she gained from her family's ordeal. Life in Limbo provides a practical, sensitive, life-saving guide for people who've been swept into the strange and difficult world of catastrophic illness. With the book, both patient and family will find the entire exhausting process less frightening and, miraculously, more hopeful. Life in Limbo is a wondrous revelation. My gratitude and continuing encouragement to Ms. Nance.

Touched my heart.......2003-12-17

Not only does this book appeal to readers who are not in a crisis situation, it is insightful and honest in it's approach to what a family goes through waiting for a loved one to recieve an organ, specifically a heart. The writer immediately pulled me into her circumstances. It is written in a way that I understood what she was going through as a wife, living through this experience her husband was having. I see through her eyes the fear and the hope, the pain and the sorrow, and her faith in the Lord to pull her together to take care of her husband and their children, her home and their life. I honestly recommend this valuable and insightful tool for anyone involved in waiting for a transplant, or anyone involved in this process.

Recovering From Mortality: Essays From A Cancer Limbo Time

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Notes on "Recovering from Mortality'
Not Your Typical Cancer Book

Recovering From Mortality: Essays From A Cancer Limbo Time
Deborah Cumming
Manufacturer: Novello Festival Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

At the time that Deborah Cumming wrote Recovering from Mortality, she was living in a situation not widely recognized but shared by many people. She knew that she might die soon, yet she was not dying now. What is a person to think in this limbo time? How is a person to act?

Rather than accept formulaic answers to these questions, she decided to discover her own path. She didn't want to pass on her answers to others; she didn't believe she knew universal answers. Nor was she interested in adding another story of a cancer patient who survived heroically or died movingly.

She did want to commune with others in limbo, with people who might find it a lonely or mysterious condition. And she felt increasingly that she was talking about the human condition in general, for whether we acknowledge it or not, all our lives will end in the not-very-distant future. She felt she wanted to be in communication, not just with the dying, but with the living.

This poignant collection of essays examines how we live our lives, in large and small ways. Friendship, family, neighbors, community-these help define who we are and Deborah Cumming writes about them with insight, and with heart.

Customer Reviews:

Notes on "Recovering from Mortality'.......2005-06-14

It was only in acknowledging her mortality - in confronting it directly, and most intimately: in absorbing into her life, not only the certain knowledge that she would die, but the various uncertainties of the limbo time - that she was able to live fully, and achieve the most complete expression of her life, and of the depth and fastness of her bond with us, with all mortal beings.

For me this is because her book written on the edge of death is so charged with life, with the affirmation of all that is most holy and most central in life, and most to be treasured.

At some point in the progress of her illness, Deborah came to understand that her predicament was at once an opportunity: that this limbo time had never been described, exhaustively, before: that it was a territory still partly undiscovered, not yet fully known, or absorbed into human experience, hovering, beyond her ken, like an unknown continent; and that, now, she had the chance - even the good fortune - to venture into it with her eyes fully open, with all her receptors alert. Every moment was precious, not only because there were so few of them, but because they contained this experience which might be conveyed to others, who might pass through the same place.

It became her habitat: this in-between area where there were no certainties, no securities.

Throughout the book the reader can feel her adapting to her new territory. She was equipped to do so: she had the vision, the mind, the will and the heart, to keep herself open to whatever came; to see, clearly, without prejudice; to sustain her attention without remission, without falling under the spell of a dogma; and to convey all this, with moving eloquence, in part because she was so gifted a writer, and partly because she was motivated to do so.

She wanted to help others, and she wanted to see, and speak the truth, of her condition. She realized that, in this limbo time, it was in being true to herself that she could be of the most help to us.

Jack McMichael Martin

Not Your Typical Cancer Book.......2005-05-16

Read this book as fast as possible to experience the brilliant highlights and the thoughtful shadows of the "limbo time" and then go back and read it again--essay by essay. Use each essay as a meditation on living. Deborah Cumming's essays are not your typical cancer book. People who are not dying of cancer do themselves a disservice by leaving this book on the shelf. We are all living and dying every day.

Deborah's observations about her experiences, when she felt well after treatment and before decline, can be applied to anyone. How often do we feel stuck in our lives? How often do we wonder what is important? How much should we pay attention to other people's opinions? Can we chart our own course? Do we want to?

There is humor in this book and wonderful juxtaposition. One of the first quotations is from a nautical chart: "the prudent mariner will not rely solely on any single aid to navigation..." Most healthy people in our modern, stress-filled time, do not take the time to exercise or relax, let alone take the time to contemplate the meaning in their lives. Deborah's words give us that opportunity: "Balance is awareness, confidence, and--yes--belief. Belief that balance matters and that it can be achieved."

I received this book as a gift. It opened my mind and my heart. It is an amazing book. I bought two more books and gave them to friends with the caveat that if the book touched their hearts, they should buy a book and give it to a person of their choosing. They loved the book as much as I did and I think you will too.

Limbo: A Memoir about Life in a Nursing Home by a Survivor

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Must read for all nursing students

Limbo: A Memoir about Life in a Nursing Home by a Survivor
Carobeth Laird
Manufacturer: Chandler & Sharp Publishers, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0883165368

Customer Reviews:

Must read for all nursing students.......1999-11-02

Carobeth, like many older people, was raised to be independant and self sufficient. The gradual loss of these abilities played tricks on her mind and caused her deep depression and finally sporadic loss of contact with reality. Read about the miracle that eventually saved her sanity.

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A Touching, Powerful Story

A Condition of Limbo
Barbie Perkins-Cooper
Manufacturer: America House Book Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1588511774

Book Description

The author's special memoir developed during the difficult, stressful days and months of a father's valiant battle against terminal illness, and his daughter's struggle to accept the inevitable and preserve his dignity against all odds, while searching for closure to her family's painful past.

Customer Reviews:

A Touching, Powerful Story.......2002-02-01

This is a beautifully crafted story of love and caring. When Barbie's father is diagnosed with cancer, he reaches out to her for support. Their past has been a rocky road, but Barbie rises to the occasion.
While serving as his primary caregiver, she is shocked by the things that she learns on this journey. Making sure that her father receives the best medical care is over-shadowed by the knowledge she acquires on elder-care issues.
Her story is a tribute to her father as well as a source of information for the reader. Issues are addressed that we should all be aware of. Long-term nursing care, medicaid, dying with dignity, and many more issues are put out there for the reader to ponder, digest and hopefully become educated to. We will all have to face these problems in some way or another. There is a lot to learn.
I would highly recommend this book. It is both inspirational as well as informative.

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Limbo: a Memoir
A. Manette Ansay
Manufacturer: Flamingo
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0732271169

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