Book Description
From childhood, Susan Gray and her cousin Louisa May Alcott have shared a safe, insular world of outdoor adventures and grand amateur theater -- a world that begins to evaporate with the outbreak of the Civil War. Frustrated with sewing uniforms and wrapping bandages, the two women journey to Washington, D.C.'s Union Hospital to volunteer as nurses. Nothing has prepared them for the horrors of this grueling experience. There they meet the remarkable Clara Barton -- the legendary Angel of the Battlefield -- and she becomes their idol and mentor. Soon one wounded soldier begins to captivate and puzzle them all -- a man who claims to be a blacksmith, but whose appearance and sharp intelligence suggest he might not be who he says he is.
Through the Civil War and its chaotic aftermath to the apex of Louisa's fame as the author of Little Women and Lincoln's appointment of Clara to the job of finding and naming the war's missing and dead, this novel is ultimately the story of friendship between women -- women who broke the mold society set for them, while still reckoning with betrayal, love, and forgiveness.
Customer Reviews:
Interesting fictional tale of Louisa May Alcott.......2007-07-19
This was an interesting novel and kept me entertained throughout. I have to admit not being a fan of Alcott, I may have read Little Women when I was younger, but I don't recall it. That will be to be on my TBR list for the future.
The story is told in the first person by Alcott's fictional cousin, Susan Gray. She recounts their childhood, family and famous residents of Concord. As adults, the Civil War begins and Mary and Louisa volunteer as nurses in a Washington DC hospital, where they meet the famous nurse and activist Clara Barton, and the mysterious patient John Sulie, who Louisa is strongly attracted to. Do be warned, this was not a pretty war, nor was the aftermath on the wounded soldiers. The author doesn't pull any punches here. The story then shifts to the aftermath of the Civil War, and Clara Barton's mission to account for all the missing and dead soldiers, which the government would prefer to remain unaccounted for. The book finishes with the remainder of Louisa's life in Condord until her death.
While Susan is a fictional cousin, it was a good way to bring the reader closer to Alcott's inner circle and know her better. Some parts of the story play a little loose with known history, which are acknowledged in the author's notes at the end of the book. All in all an entertaining read, but as I previously noted, I'm not a huge fan of Alcott. Good read, but not one I'm likely to take off the shelf and read again every few years.
A Good Read For an Alcott Fan.......2005-07-04
I enjoyed this book, although to be honest I felt as if Louisa and Clara were going to be teaming up as nurses, which was not the case. So I felt as if this book deceived me in a way. But I can overlook that.
I am a huge Alcott fan and have been since I read Little Women. So I was very eager to find this book. It was very interesting to see how the author used Alcott and the made up cousin Susan. Hardcore Alcott fans may not be amused with some parts in the story because of some of the things Alcott says. But overall it made me think about Alcott more and why she was so driven.
I also don't understand why everyone in the book loves John so much. He was an OK character but to get so much love??? It's was very strange for me to understand. In addition, Susan acts more like a modern woman than a Victorian. But I tried not to dwell on these aspects and I enjoyed the overall book.
I loved this book ,it is my new favorite.......2004-12-12
This book although fiction talks lot about Alcott and Barton's life during the civil war. I am a huge Clara Barton fan and a nurse so I was drawn to this book (it was given to me as an early christmas gift). It only took me 5 days to read (in between the rest of my busy life). I found myself think about the charcters all the time. I definetly recommend this book.
The Glory Cloak - How Little Women grew.......2004-09-25
Patricia O'Brien caught my attention as I began to read her book and my mind heard echoes of Little Women in its prose. Her voice is her own, but often approximates Alcott's tone and approach, probably intentionally. It was easy to recall scenes from a book that ranks in my top five all time favorites as I read Glory Cloak. O'Brien neatly slips allusions to Alcott's most well-known work into her own story - and does it in a way that isn't intrusive and doesn't smack you over the head with reminders. She just let's you be gently aware that you and she share a love.
The history is good, slightly fictionalized, but that's ok - we all go into the story aware that it is NOT a text book. The characters are truly engaging and quite three dimentional. I felt as though I got to know the person inside Alcott and I liked doing it through Cousin Susan as a vehicle, even while I got to know Susan in her own right. The story flows smoothly, enriched by detail that gives a nice sense of place without becoming cloyng about transendentalists (the sense of seeing intimate glimpses of famous writers like Hawthorne, Thoreau and Emerson was fun. Like being a bit of a voyeaur).
Let me say this - I'm a voracious reader, but often guilty of skimming through slow parts or speed reading to get flavor and not waste my time with the drudge of some books. This one - well, I began it one afternoon, read for about an hour - reading each word, sometimes rereading passages I enjoyed - then got called away. Next day, I locked myself up and read until the very last page. Then I wished I could stay a while longer.[...]
historical women who are not hysterical.......2004-09-13
This is a book about Louisa May Alcott and her fictional cousin Susan, both of whom happen to interact with Clara Barton. It is not a story of the friendship between Alcott and Barton; indeed, Susan is closer to each of them than they are to each other. Still, it is a good story, well told, about friendship among women; it could stand on that truthful blurb alone, IMO. The book also gives good insight into the lives of women in the mid-19th century and provides never-to-be-forgotten glimpses into Civil War medical care.
It may be my own pet peeve (I once had a fight with a poet who wrote about cows being made into bacon) but historical accuracy is a little loose. I don't mind the imagined cousin to move the plot along but, IIRC, Lincoln did not die the night he was assassinated; he died several days later at a residence across the street from Ford's theater. This jars the storytelling at a crucial point in the background narrative.
The Bookschlepper
Book Description
Before Little Women brought her wider fame, Alcott achieved recognition for her accounts of her work as a volunteer nurse in an army hospital. Written during the winter of 1862-63, her lively dispatches revealed the desperate realities of battlefield medicine as well as the tentative first steps of women in military service.
Customer Reviews:
Civil War Hospital Sketches.......2006-03-08
This book was short and gave some insight, but was a little disappointing since I had just finished reading Civil War Nurse: The Diary and Letters of Hannah Ropes. Both Louisa May Alcott and Hannah Ropes were assigned to the same hospital. Hannah Ropes' book is more in depth with the day-to-day details and her feelings than Hospital Sketches. Louisa May Alcott's book makes you think it was written specifically for a certain reading audience in mind and was found lacking in some respects.
(signed LAS)
Average customer rating:
- First-person account by a talented writer
- A Captivating Journal of Experiences
- apropos to current wars
- Hospital Sketches
- An Interesting View of Life for a Soon-to-be-Famous Author!
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Hospital Sketches
Louisa May Alcott
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ASIN: 0918222788 |
Book Description
An account of Alcott's experiences as a nurse during the Civil War.
Customer Reviews:
First-person account by a talented writer.......2007-09-24
This little book tells what is was like to work in a Civil War hospital. It is autobiographical, although the author changes her name in the narrative, which was considered proper in women's writing at the time.
Louisa May Alcott had an ability to tolerate chaos and laugh at herself, which lends a charm to her writing, even though it is the sometimes wordy prose that was common in the 1860's. I found the book quick to read and enjoyable.
The book would have been enhanced with a brief biography of the author, perhaps on the back cover. She is, of course, best known for her books for young people, but she had other accomplishments which are remarkable considering that she was afflicted with mercury poisoning, a result of medication given for typhoid, which she contracted in the hospital. In this book, she describes the bout with typhoid from the point of view of her becoming a patient in her room, and how kind the staff was to her. She tells that she lost her hair as an effect of the medication. Eventually her father shows up and she goes back to Massachusetts with him.
Alcott based the book on letters she wrote home while serving in the hospital. Some were hastily written and she did not edit them strenuously because she did not want to lose the immediacy of the writing. In a few places, I longed for more clarity. Also, she makes references to literary characters of the time and most of these were lost on me. Still, there is much of value in this book and it is worth reading.
A Captivating Journal of Experiences.......2007-08-01
What aroused my interest in this book? No snazzy title. No enticing aroma of mystery or intrigue about it at all. But am I glad that I did read it? Unquestionably! From start to finish this book never falters, never flags in evoking the times, the place, and the human experience. Louisa's style may require some adjustments and patience from modern readers, and it probably will appeal to a more mature audience. (I don't see young people dropping Harry Potter for the tale Louisa tells.) As another reviewer eloquently noted, the book tears at the heart and makes you smile and laugh. Would that I could write half as good.The truth of the book cannot be denied. Read it and decide for yourself.
apropos to current wars.......2007-03-07
As I write this, there is currently a controversy swirling in Washington DC, about the shabby treatment of some wounded American veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Making the cover of Newsweek, and with the general of a veterans' hospital and the Secretary of the Army being forced to resign.
Alcott's writings take on a very contemporary tinge, under these circumstances. Of course, she wrote of a far bloodier struggle, on American soil. Her descriptions of the Union hospitals do bring forth the primitive treatments then available, and the sacrifices of the thousands injured. Her book is a reminder of the cost of wars. Though the Civil War was necessary to end slavery, while some current readers might reasonably wonder whether entering Iraq was worth it.
Hospital Sketches.......2007-02-09
This book was in great condition. The shipping was very quick just like promised.
An Interesting View of Life for a Soon-to-be-Famous Author!.......2005-10-05
This book allows the reader an indelible insight into a life of service that indubitably was a character building experience for Alcott. One can see where she might have developed a truer compassion for her characters because she partook of such hard and sacrificial work during such a turbulent time as the Civil War. This book tears at your heart at times and at others makes you laugh. What a wonderful gift to have read it!
Book Description
These sketches, taken from letters hastily written in the few leisure moments of a very busy life, make no pretension to literary merit, but are simply a brief record of one person's hospital experience. As such, they are republished, with their many faults but partially amended, lest in retouching they should lose whatever force or freshness the inspiration of the time may have given them. To those who have objected to a "tone of levity" in some portions of the sketches, I desire to say that the wish to make the best of every thing, and send home cheerful reports even from that saddest of scenes, an army hospital, probably produced the impression of levity upon those who have never known the sharp contrasts of the tragic and comic in such a life. The unexpected favour with which the little book was greeted, and the desire for a new edition, increase the author's regret that it is not more worthy such a kind reception.
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Little Women
Louisa May Alcott
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ASIN: 1400131251 |
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Little Women
Louisa May Alcott
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ASIN: 1400151252 |
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House Life: Space, Place and Family in Europe
Manufacturer: Berg Publishers
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Book Description
This book, which fills a gap on the materiality of lived relations, examines households within the context of their immediate physical surroundings of home and shows how human interactions are reflected in built forms. Houses are dynamic participants in family life in many ways. They often pre-date the origins and outlast the life spans of their inhabitants, but they can exert a powerful influence on the organization of behaviors and the values of family members, as well as on the forms and flows of family life across the generations. Constituting wealth, investment, security and inheritance, they are an objective in and of themselves in many domestic strategies.
Drawing on developments within anthropology, archaeology, architecture and social history, the authors demonstrate, through detailed case studies, how household or family relations can usefully be mined to re-situate social theory in both space and time. Space, boundaries, family cycles, historic changes, migration patterns, ethnicity, memory and gender are all interrogated for the light they shed on how people interact with the physical world around them and what this means culturally and symbolically. Europe is an especially rich focus for this kind of analysis because it is distinguished by its long, well-documented history and a recent period of intense change.
Book Description
If product is no longer king, what is? Companies like Dell Computers, Lexus, Wal-Mart and Amazon.com have found phenomenal success by coming up with the answer-channels. The channels by which goods are marketed and distributed have become the new drivers of economic success. From these channels flow customer satisfaction, market share, revenue gains and profitability. It's not so much what you sell today, but how you sell it. And there is no going back.
In The Channel Advantage, Booz?Allen & Hamilton consultants Steven Wheeler an Evan Hirsh write about dozens of companies that have excelled in this channel-driven economy. In one telling example, Wheeler and Hirsch analyze the great success of Dell Computer. While Dell makes top-quality personal computers, it's the company's direct-to-customer sales channel that sets it apart. By building computers to order, Dell keeps inventory low, lets consumers buy exactly what they want, and pushes prices down by cutting out the middleman.
The Channel Advantage examines today's "Channel Champions," the companies that have mastered this new environment. Wheeler and Hirsh tell us how Lexus broke into the luxury car business by focusing so intensely on customer service that dealers personally called up customers to report a product recall. The authors also explain how the rise of Amazon.com represents the exploration of an entirely new channel: e-commerce via the Internet.
Wheeler and Hirsh, both partners at Booz?Allen & Hamilton, the leading management consulting firm, base their exploration and analysis on real-world experience working with clients. They've not only identified this change, they've lived-making The Channel Advantage a must-read for anyone who wants to understand what it takes to thrive in today's channel-based economy.
Customer Reviews:
Quite interesting book.......2002-07-09
Very interesting book. I don't mean practical but can potentialy open your eyes to the different aspects of channels integration and management. Cases could be very inspiring once reading them.
AVOID!.......2001-01-26
This is a book that offers zero new insights! What's worse... there are a lot of bold statements in this book, that I don't share. The authors have forgotten to share the evidence for these statements, so I can not take them very seriously.
A must read for manufacturing execs and channel strategists!.......2000-12-05
While multiple books have been written about channel management, few can match the understanding and insight presented in The Channel Advantage. This book provides a framework for leveraging channels for growth, customer satisfaction, and competitive advantage. Including case studies from companies such as Saturn, The Home Depot, WW Grainger, GE, and Snap-on Tools, Evan Hirsh and Steven Wheeler identify the impact of a successful channel management strategy. Highly recommend!
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