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- The testimony of a dedicated responsible effective American Senator
- Thoughtful and Depressing--American Does Not Elect the Smart Ones
- A great look at America
- Great Book
- "The Senator, Statesman, Leader, and all around good man"
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Time Present, Time Past: A Memoir
Bill Bradley
Manufacturer: Vintage
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Binding: Paperback
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A Sense of Where You Are: Bill Bradley at Princeton
ASIN: 0679768157
Release Date: 1997-01-14 |
Book Description
During his terms in the U.S. Senate, Bill Bradley won a national reputation for thoughtfulness, decency, and a willingness to take controversial positions on issues ranging from tax reform to the rights of Native Americans. All these qualities inform this best-selling memoir, in which Bradley assesses his political career and the experiences that shaped his convictions, and looks beyond them to consider the state of the American union on the eve of the 21st century.
Time Present, Time Past offers an intimate portrait of the day-to-day working of the Senate: how legislation gets passed and sometimes thwarted; how money is raised and at what cost. But Bradley also writes about deeper questions: What does it means to be an American in an ago of dwindling opportunities and increasing inequality? How much can we expect from our public servants? What do we owe our fellow citizens? The result is a genuinely revelatory book, informed by intelligence, compassion, and unprecedented candor.
"Strikingly reflects the realities of modern politics, what it looks like, feels like, from the inside."--New York Times Book Review
Customer Reviews:
The testimony of a dedicated responsible effective American Senator .......2006-12-10
This is a very well- written and thoughtful book. Bill Bradley wrote it just as his third Senatorial term was coming to a close. Unfortunately close to that time he had to deal with a number of personal tragedies, including his wife's breast cancer, the severe illness of both of his parents. Bradley tells of his Chrystal City childhood, the only child of his arthritically disabled Presbyterian banker father, and his strongly Methodist mother. He does not revel in his own personal athletic feats and accomplishments. Rather he presents us with a picture of small- town life in that era, and the kind of world he grew up in.
One of the strengths of the book is that it tells much about different regions and populations of America. As a Senator and Presidential candidate he visited eventually every state in the Union and he for instance in his chapter on his Scotch- Irish family background describes the economy and social world of the Appalachians.
Bradley is eager to present to the reader his vision of what America should be. He speaks a lot about responsibility and discipline, and communal obligation. These are virtues he himself personally exemplifies, and one feels how strongly he is repelled by an America gone too soft and self- indulgent, too hedonistically obsessed with short- term pleasures.
He tells of his work in bringing about the Tax Reform Bill of 1986 which eliminated many loopholes, and simplified the system so that it had only two tax brackets. He talks about other public initiatives of his related to helping the poor, the one - parent families. He gives a chapter of the book to considering the difficulties the great American middle- class has faced over recent years.
One has the sense in reading the book of his being a thoroughly decent, hard- working and fair person.
Bradley has an amusing little section in which he talks about his efforts at improving his own public speaking. Here of course was his major failing as a political figure, his lack of charisma. He was eclipsed almost instantaneously by the charismatic Clinton.
Bradley is the work- horse of Orwell's fable. The solid honest good person who does the drudgery and certainly does not get a final good reward for it.
This is not to say that Bradley complains . He doesn't. He does not in fact put great emphasis in the work on his own feelings. He does however show how much he cares for America, and is devoted to its well- being.
This is an outstanding political autobiography not because it overwhelms emotionally but because it rationally clearly gives a 'picture' of what America is and might be. And it tells the story of a highly devoted public servant who did his best to make a better America.
Thoughtful and Depressing--American Does Not Elect the Smart Ones.......2005-09-25
Bill Bradley and John McCain may go down in history as the two smartest men who should have been President, but could not get elected. This is an extraordinarily thoughtful book, and it makes one almost cry out in despair. America has given up the idea of an informed democracy led by informed representatives of the people, and as the author concludes his book, given over all the power to two kinds of technocrats: political technocrats like Karl Rove who will do anything to get their man elected, including unethical misrepresentations against Republicans like John McCain, never mind Democrats; and corporate technocrats, who will kill off the middle class and increase the working poor in the name of corporate bottom lines that pass off the social and economic costs to the very taxpayers being disenfranchised.
The current Congressional and Executive systems do not work as intended. Congress has become insular and corrupt, and the Executive--at the political level--has become ideological and corrupt. Bill Bradley's writing makes it clear that there are solutions, but men like Bill Bradley will not get elected--nor even heard--until sufficient catastrophe befalls America and the people rise up in desperation to reclaim their heritage.
The index is helpful in looking up specific views of the author, e.g. on health care, national security, etcetera.
The New American Story
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
A great look at America.......2000-08-12
Bradley takes a thoughtful look at his life and many issues that face America. I liked reading of his Missouri youth and NBA days, plus his analysis of economic change, media sensationalism, and the corrosive influence of money on politics. Bradley's superb (if short) discourse on the inner workings of the U.S. Senate provides the type of useful information one never gets from our sound-bite media. Bradley even takes issues like water policy and shows why they matter. The Senator's blame-whites-only view of racial divisions was rather naive, but even here he makes some points. This book is more than a readable memoir; it's a compassionate, thought-inspiring look at America.
Great Book.......2000-06-06
book with tremendous depth, dedication and ideas.. America is unfortunate to not to have man like Senator Bradley as President
"The Senator, Statesman, Leader, and all around good man".......2000-05-15
In this intelligent, thoughtful, witty,and captivating memoir Bill Bradley tells stories about America and indivdual Americans while espousing his beliefs about what the nation has become and what it should be. The book transcends the traditional memoir of a politician as it chooses to speak more about the effects of policy rather than what particular policy can benefit our society. The reader feels the former Senator's compassion for the human condition and understands why he would be a wonderful leader. It is a must read for anyone who believes the hardships that face the nation can be overcome.
Customer Reviews:
Very Entertaining.......2007-08-10
I am a native to the Tampa area and have family members who had very strong ties to Ybor City in "the day". Ybor City enjoys an extremely diverse and interesting history. The book captures the diversity of cultures and people of Old Ybor. Ybor City is now known more for its "entertainment" but the very rich heritage of the town should be perpetuated. This book is a wonderful way of getting a glimpse of life during that time. As the author states in the front of the book, It is "his truth". Having been exposed to the culture, I know what he says is true. This book is by no means a dry documentary. It is almost a collections of vignettes. Definitely worth the read.
#1 Book.......2001-04-10
I know a good book when I read one. Ybor City Chronicles is a excellent one. This book delivers a fresh new look at Ybor City that no one has ever seen before! It is comical and serious, yet it still gives you an inside look to the city of Ybor. In addition, it provides wonderful profiles of Ybor's most powerful people. Once I read this novel I honestly felt like I knew so much more about the city I grew up in (Tampa/Ybor). I recommend this book to anyone who wants a new perspective of this sun-bathed city.
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James Welwood: Physician to the Glorious Revolution (Signpost Biographies)
Elizabeth Lane Furdell
Manufacturer: Da Capo Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1580970052 |
Book Description
“I have always chased my father, chased after his love, chased him through his many changes.
I chased him even when I thought I was running in the other direction.
Today, even though he is gone, I chase him still.
I know he is the key to my freedom.”
To runners around the world, Dr. George Sheehan, author of the landmark New York Times bestseller
Running and Being, was nothing short of a guru — the country’s “greatest philosopher of sport.”
But to his son Andrew, who had spent his entire boyhood longing for the attention and approval of an emotionally distant father, he was an incomprehensible paradox: a lifelong loner, who was now sunning himself in the spotlight of the nation’s press; a hero to millions, who seemed to have no time for his own son.
The events that transformed George Sheehan from doctor to family man to bestselling author and media magnet began at the depths of what we would now call a midlife crisis, when he rediscovered an old love — running.
Twenty-five years after his days on a high school cross-country team, he remembered how running made him feel free, and began beating a solitary path down his suburban streets. With running as his new religion, the formerly quiet, withdrawn man became an unlikely evangelist, converting a sedentary nation to the theology of fitness, and in the process becoming an internationally known figure.
But the freedom he found in running was not enough, and one day he left his family, having decided that life was “an experiment of one,” and it was time for him to start living it.
Angry and disillusioned after years of enduring his father’s self-absorption, and hurt by his apparent indifference, Andrew had long since begun the search for his own version of freedom, looking first to drugs and later to alcohol. By his twenties he was a confirmed alcoholic. By his thirties his marriage had fallen apart and he was drinking more heavily than ever.
It was at that moment that his father threw him a lifeline. Although he was struggling with the cancer that would eventually end his life, Dr. Sheehan was the first to notice his son’s pain, and to reach out to him.
In this stunningly candid book, Andrew Sheehan describes the process through which these two men carefully and lovingly rebuilt their relationship. And in the effort to understand and forgive the dark side of his father’s psyche, Andrew shows how he came to understand, and to transcend, his own.
A gracefully written paean to the healing power of forgiveness, a memoir that will resonate with any “fallible” parent or child,
Chasing the Hawk traces the arduous steps that carry father and son down the hard road to resolution, healing, and love.
From the Hardcover edition.
Customer Reviews:
This is a book more than about running.......2007-08-29
I picked up this book thinking the theme of father-son relationship/s would be good for me to read but it was more than that..it was about the love of running and family relationships. I liked reading this book.
A Nice Surprise.......2002-12-28
This is a wonderful story, marvelously written. I didn't expect much when I first picked it up - - another child of the famous capitalizing on their parent's fame - - but after a few pages I simply couldn't put it down. The book is captivating, and I hope we hear more from its talented author in the future. Thanks for sharing your story with us, Andrew!
the examined life.......2002-03-10
Andrew Sheehan writes well this rite-of-passage story of an alienated son making peace with his aging father. He also unblinkingly chronicles his own descent into drink as a young man, and the trail of broken relationships he left behind. At the close of the book, we are cheering for both Andrew and his father, "Dr. Runner" George, as they find peace and a measure of happiness with each other.
Both men are seekers; for a large part of his life, George combed through the works of the philosophers, and left and later returned to, the Catholic faith of his youth. As one of 12 children (what a brood, even for the post-WW II era!),George seeks love and attention which he felt lacking in his childhood,
as he was crowded in the late-middle of the group of children.
"The unexamined life is not worth living," one of the Greeks
tells us, and both men tend to examine their lives in great detail. Indeed, they both stop just short of navel gazing, an activity to which this reviewer is opposed. Too much examining can block one from living, I would put forward as a corollary to the philosopher.
That said, this worthwhile book is an addition to the literature of father-son conflicts. Its upbeat conclusion which surprise and warm you.
memories.......2002-02-07
If... you are a babyboomer If... you are a runner.. and if your life was complicated by a fathers dominance and isolation then this book is for you!
ANDREW SHEEHAN tells the story of his famous father the late GEORGE SHEEHAN a doctor who's passion for running consumed not only a country but himself ,hes family and everyone around him.
THE authors eloquent discription of growing up in a large irish-catholic family,his long battle with alcohol,the abandment of a father.The nostalgia was at times so overwhelming it brought me to tears...because my life so closely mirrored that of andy sheehan
the church the rejection the Kennedys growing up in the 60's the BEATLES the war the drugs.this book will take you back to a place and time in our lives that made our generation so special
Surprisingly well written and an excellent story.......2001-11-17
I picked up this book inclined to not like it as another celebrity book, and a minor celebrity at that. I feared it would just be a son picking nits and blaming his father for the bad turn his life had taken. However, this book is an excellent story of a father-son relationship, personal redemption and the search for meaning in life. It is far easier to appreciate this book's excellence if you have no prior involvement with the father's work.
Amazon.com
Meditating on his parents' marriage as well as his own thorny relationship with them, poet C.K. Williams forsakes the conventional memoir format in favor of a succession of lyrical short takes, some hardly more than a page long, that accrue to form an impressionistic portrait of two often unhappy people. Williams's father was a businessman whose work was "the defining essence of his life," a man who was often cruel to his family and made it a policy never to apologize. His mother, self-centered and pleasure-loving, remained haunted by childhood losses (including the sudden deaths of her father and two sisters) and by the poverty she suffered in the early years of her marriage. It's the kind of family in which a wife can say to her husband, "You used to be such a nice man," a father to his son, "You're a bastard, just like your mother." Yet Williams's spare, elegantly written elegy also contains tributes to his father's financial generosity (however controlling) and to his mother's stoicism as she lay dying from lung cancer. In the end, it's less the particulars of their failures that matter than the author's ability to transform painful feelings into transforming ones: "peace for rage, affection for frustration, devotion and compassion for misunderstanding." --Wendy Smith
Book Description
Winner of the PEN/Voelcker career achievement award in poetry
Misgivings is C. K. William's searing recollection of his family's extreme dynamics and of his parents' deaths after years of struggle, bitterness, inner conflict, and, finally, love. Like Kafka's self-revealing Letter to His Father, Misgivings is a full of doubt, both philosophical and personal, but as a work of art it is sure and true.
Williams's father was an "ordinary businessman"--angry, demanding, addicted to the tension he created with the people he loved; a man who could recite the Greek myths to his son yet vowed never to apologize to anybody. Wiiiams's mother was a housewife, a woman with a great capacity for pleasure, who was stoical about the family's dire early poverty yet remained affected by it even when they became well-off. Together, these two formed what Williams calls the "conspiracy that made me who I am." His account of their life together and of their deaths--his father's in a final abandonment of the will to live, his mother's with calm resignation--is a literary form of the reconciliation the family achieved at the end of his parents' lives, composed as a series of short takes, a double helix of experience and recollection.
Customer Reviews:
A family history that is also a poem.......2000-04-27
This spare, 170-page prose work is not a memoir in the usual sense of the word: it is a collection of visceral memories, some extended, some quite brief, all of which hinge on the author/poet's intensely felt relationship with his mother and father. A wide-ranging portrait of a mid-century East Coast Jewish family, Williams calls his work an "autobiographical meditation." I began reading quite skeptically, wondering why a man of age 63 would still be so caught up with family issues -- especially his unblinking descriptions of his long-dead parents' worst characteristics. But as I proceeded, I was surprised to find this seemingly self-centered meditation seeping into the musty recesses of my own memory and experience. His language is burnished to a luster; he can conjure memories of a child's-eye view from the top of a see-saw or a momentary parental rage that has stayed with you over decades. Thus I came to find the work transformative; persuasive in the way that a poem can take you somewhere you weren't planning to go. I am going to recommend "Misgivings" to all my grown-up men friends.
Book Description
When his father died, J. R. Ackerley was shocked to discover that he had led a secret life. And after Ackerley himself died, he left a surprise of his own—this coolly considered, unsparingly honest account of his quest to find out the whole truth about the man who had always eluded him in life. But Ackerley's pursuit of his father is also an exploration of the self, making My Father and Myself a pioneering record, at once sexually explicit and emotionally charged, of life as a gay man. This witty, sorrowful, and beautiful book is a classic of twentieth-century memoir.
Customer Reviews:
alienated, sad, and gay in London between the wars.......2007-03-16
This is a beautifully written autobiography of a man breaking new literary ground. He openly wrote of his life as a gay man when it was ostensively illegal in GB, his search for love, and ultimately how he felt cut off from life. Each page aches with sadness, confusion, and need, never able to find what he wants from a human being, though he did late with his dog, Tulip, about which he wrote a classic book of love. There are quite unforgettable images thoughout the book, such as chance sexual encounters on a train ride with his mysterious father or the courtesies paid to him by his many lovers, such as a man with such bad smelling feet that he left his shoes on in bed. While there is a great deal of ironic humor in the book, its overall tone is one of loss, feeling lost in life and unloved in his many failed attempts to find a lasting partner. He also explores the mystery of his father, who hung out as a youth with a gay man he later knew as his landlord, and whom he never really knew or understood. It is a very moving book about an alien milieu and time, of a man hemmed in by inhibition and unfulfilled need.
A true classic - and important document........2006-01-06
This is one of the best books I've ever read. I've only just finished reading it for the second time. I'm still in shock and awe. Such a story. Such a candid and engaging chronicle of one man's life and also the life of his father.
Ackerley was a pioneer of "gay" literature. This is his masterpiece (without question). A more open and honest depiction of a gay man's sexual life (his likes and dislikes, his promiscuity, sexual incontinence, and his endless search for "the ideal friend")hadn't yet been written. Published the year after Ackerley's death, this book (and Crisp's "The Naked Civil Servant") clearly inspired a generation of gay writers.
Beautifully detailed, "My Father and Myself" is a unique memoir. I'd like to tell you all the details of the story, shocking and poignant. However, the pleasures this volume provides are in its revelations - to elaborate too much would spoil the fun. A soldier in WWI (and a prisoner of war), a lover of Ivor Novello, a private secretary to a Maharajah, a close friend of E. M. Forster - Ackerley's story is never dull or stodgy. "My Father and Myself" is a timeless treasure.
Not as good as I'd heard........2002-08-11
For years, I have heard about this book. After reading it, I am not that thrilled. I would suggest purchasing the JR Ackerly biography, as opposed to this. It's a bit sanitized for my taste.
Ackerley at his finest.......2002-05-16
The NYRB Classics series pretty much started out with a slew of reprints of the cult writer J.R. Ackerley, including his three memoirs (this, MY DOG TULIP and HINDOO HOLIDAY) and his one novel (WE THINK THE WORLD OF YOU). This, I would say, is easily his finest work. Ackerley's masterful reconstruction of his father's mysterious lovelife (comprising two unwed households and several unexplained longterm "friendships" with wealthy men) and his own conflicted sex life as a gay man in early twentieth-century London. Ackerley's tone always seems extremely honest, and while the narrative never comes to any absolute conclusions about Ackerley's father you're left convinced that these omissions and gaps are meaningful in and of themselves. This is as about a fine and interesting a memoir as I can imagine.
The Howling Fantods.......2001-03-06
Ackerley, a subtle and unassuming writer, has lately been quietly adopted as a "gay" writer. The term seems to have had less meaning in Ackerley's time than in ours. "My Father and Myself" would perhaps have been, at the time it was written, a suspenseful tale; it is constructed almost as a mystery. The modern reader, alert to every faint whiff of suggested homosexuality, will have guessed the memoir's (un-)shattering conclusion well before he has reached the end. No matter: Ackerley could've written elegantly and compellingly about stock-car racing, or peeling paint; his material here--his father's past and his own youth--is of universal interest, and of particular interest to unhappy sons.
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How I overcame my fear of whores, royalty, gays, teachers, hippies, psychiatrists, athletes, transvestites, clergymen, police, children, bullies, politicians, ... mothers, fathers, publishers, and myself
Justin Thomas
Manufacturer: mcClelland and Stewart
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
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ASIN: 0771085559 |
Average customer rating:
- Really Enjoyable
- sad, alienated, and gay in London between the wars
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My Father and Myself
J.R. Ackerley
Manufacturer: Coward-Mccann
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000O90HEG |
Customer Reviews:
Really Enjoyable.......2007-10-09
I just completely, thoroughly and totally enjoyed this book!!! I believe the author Andrew Holleran got me interested in J.R. Ackerley, as I think he said his favorite authors were Proust and Ackerley, so I thought I'd give Ackerley a try!! Such a candid, forthright book. Ackereley is a VERY good writer. I am so interested in him I am now reading Peter Parker's biography of him, plus ordered 2 other books by Ackerley and I will leave reviews or coments for them all after reading them.
sad, alienated, and gay in London between the wars.......2007-03-15
This is a beautifully written autobiography of a man, which broke new literary ground. He openly wrote of his life as a gay man when it was illegal in GB, his search for love, and ultimately how he felt cut off from life. Each page aches with sadness, confusion, and need, never able to find what he wants from a human being, though he did later with his dog, Tulip, about which he wrote a classic book of requited love. There are quite unforgettable images thoughout the book, such as chance sexual encounters on a train ride with his mysterious father or the courtesies paid to him by his many lovers, such as a man with such bad smelling feet that he left his shoes on in bed. While there is a great deal of ironic humor in the book, its overall tone is one of loss, feeling lost in life and unloved in his many failed attempts to find a lasting partner. He also explores the mystery of his father, who hung out as a youth with a gay man he later knew as his landlord, and whom he never really knew or understood. It is a very moving book about an alien milieu and time, of a man hemmed in by inhibition and unfulfilled need.
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