The Children's Hospital Guide to Your Child's Health and Development

The Children's Hospital Guide to Your Child's Health and Development
Average customer rating:

Very useful resource from birth through elementary school

It's a MUST have

The Only Guide that New Parents Need!

Brand new and a must have!

Calms the New-Parent Jitters!

The Children's Hospital Guide to Your Child's Health and Development
Children's Hospital Boston
Manufacturer: Perseus Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Family Health | Parenting & Families | Subjects | Books
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Child Care | Parenting | Parenting & Families | Subjects | Books
General | Parenting & Families | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0738207438
Release Date: 2002-11-05

Book Description

From the world's leading experts, the ultimate guide to raising a healthy child.

Based on the research and clinical experience of America's leading children's hospital, this important reference work is the most complete, authoritative, and up-to-date guide to child health and development ever made available to parents. Three essential parts form this unique work: a detailed account of all aspects of normal development from birth through the school years, a carefully designed emergency section, and a comprehensive guide to every common illness or condition that affects children.

Written by a distinguished team of medical editors and more than seventy-five specialists on the hospital staff, this is a wonderfully supportive work in which parents can put their absolute trust. Destined to be the gold standard for child health information, the guide offers all the medical, psychological, and behavioral advice that parents need, in a single volume. No parent can afford to be without it.

A Merloyd Lawrence Book

Customer Reviews:

Very useful resource from birth through elementary school.......2007-04-04

I bought this book after I had my first child 6 years ago. I have consistently referred to it and found the information very useful and the recommendations quite reasonable. It covers every subject you may encounter in a true reference format. The book comes in VERY handy when you have a sick or injured child, but are unsure if a trip to the ER is necessary. This book has been my standard gift to anyone expecting their first child.

It's a MUST have.......2003-06-13

This book is awesome. I'm a mother of 2 and didn't need any help with my first child, but my second child was very difficult and I found this to be an invaluable resource. It even lets you know when you should contact your doctor or when you should head to the emergency room. Being from Boston, I know that Boston Children's Hospital is one of the best in the nation. What is also great about this book is that it covers the developmental tasks of a typical child for a specific age group. It is a great basis to know if your child is under or over performing and helps you find your strengths and weaknnesses. It also has all of the growth charts in the back and an amazing appendix of different child illnesses. Anything you could possible want to know or have questions about when and if you need to be concerned is in here. It's like a Bible!

The Only Guide that New Parents Need!.......2001-12-23

If you are about to have your first child, buy this book. If one of your children or grandchildren is about to have a first child, give this book to her or him as a gift. If you like this book as much as I think you will, you should consider having a copy at home and one in each of the family cars for situations that arise while away from home.

This book deserves more than five stars. It is the only comprehensive guide to childhood development and illnesses that I have seen. The content is remarkable for being easy to understand, concise, and representing many different perspectives (including those of moms, dads, elder siblings, physicians, and other health care professionals). The book exudes a respectful sense of optimism that parents will do a good job, and avoids taking stands about issues related to religious preferences. At the same time, the book is quite up-front about pointing out what works best for children and their families.

The book is organized so that the first four sections deal with developmental issues, from learning to mimic to toilet training to dealing with jealous siblings to school adjustment, on through the school age years in considerable detail. The fifth part gives you information on childhood illnesses, injuries, and conditions.

I particularly liked the way the development sections talked about how children usually regress just before making a major development, and that this is healthy. The book even points out the good sides of childish outbursts. I wish someone had told me these things many years ago!

Having been a parent of four children over the last 30 years, I checked out the book against every illness, emergency, and developmental issue that I ran into for my own children and their friends. In each case, there was relevant material that told me more than I knew when I had to deal with each of these issues, despite having read every book on child care that I could lay my hands on prior to the experience. In particular, the book is very good at explaining both the near-term and the long-term consequences of a situation. For example, one of our children went into severe convulsions with a sudden spike in fever to 106 degrees. The book points out that this happens to about five percent of all children, more often to boys, and that there usually are no long-term consequences. I wish I had known that at the time.

I would especially like to praise the chapter on child care, which has 31 pages that summarize the best and latest research on how to select the right kind of child care if both parents work. You even get what the ratio of child-care people should be to children at different ages. Further, there's an excellent section earlier on what's involved when a child is sick, including how parents should think about how to balance their work and the needs of a sick child who needs a parent at home.

Of particular value to new parents will be the sections in each area called "When to Call the Doctor" which gives you a sense of not only "when" but "how quickly" you should seek help.

To get some idea of how contemporary and extensive this book is, you will find a section on "Body Piercing Infections."

Unlike many books on childhood and pediatric illnesses, this one is not the views of one person. Instead, over 80 physicians and pediatric experts combined to share their expertise, drawing on individuals practicing at Boston Children's Hospital or teaching at Harvard Medical School. I have great faith in Boston Children's Hospital having often taken our children there to deal successfully with important illnesses. I am also pleased to say that one of our children has survived the experience to become a staff member in the hospital's emergency room.

The section on emergencies is not only good, it is also organized to help you prepare to handle emergencies before they occur . . . and to avoid them in some cases. Those pages are rimmed in pink so you can find them quickly if you are in a panic.

Give children the best informed and most loving attention you can!

Brand new and a must have!.......2001-07-26

I have been a pediatric nurse for 25 years and a parent for 15. I wanted to get a reference book for new parents and found this one published this year. I'm a big fan of Dr. Brazelton and his Touch Points which are included here regarding child development. The disease section was very thorough and I particularly liked the asthma section. It has the most recent treatment modalities laid out simply and clearly. I bought this at a regular bookstore for full price because I had to see for myself if it was of any value. It is an excellent reference, a "must have" for any parent. ....

Calms the New-Parent Jitters!.......2001-03-22

I bought this book for my brother and his wife, new parents of a 10-week old girl, after the baby got her first cold. We wished we had bought this excellent manual sooner! Not only would the common-sense approach have calmed the new parents, but we could have saved an expensive doctor visit. The book has an extensive illness section that appeals to men who just want the facts, plus offers lots of tips and sidebar articles. A keeper!

Just Marriage (New Democracy Forum/Boston Review)

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Just Marriage (New Democracy Forum/Boston Review)
Mary Lyndon Shanley
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Social Policy | Government | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

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No Place Like Home: Relationships and Family Life among Lesbians and Gay Men
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Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation

ASIN: 0195176251

Book Description

From the ground breaking legal decisions on gay marriage to the promotion of marriage for low-income families, the "sacred institution" of marriage has turned into a public battleground. Who should be allowed to marry and is marriage a public or private act? Should marriage be abandoned completely? Or should marriage be redefined as a civil institution that promotes sexual and racial equality? As the fierce national debate over same-sex marriage and civil unions continues, Mary Lyndon Shanley argues that while the state should continue to play a role in regulating personal relations, the law must be fundamentally reformed if marriage is to become a more just institution. Fourteen prominent writers and thinkers respond, including Nancy F. Cott, William N. Eskridge, Jr., Amitai Etzioni, Martha Albertson Fineman, and Cass R. Sunstein.

Make Over Your Man: The Woman's Guide to Dressing Any Man in Her Life

Average customer rating:

What most men need to know
The must-have book for any man!
A whole new look...
Fashion Bible for a "Lost" Soul
Best of it kind

Make Over Your Man: The Woman's Guide to Dressing Any Man in Her Life
Lloyd Boston
Manufacturer: Broadway
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Love & Romance | Relationships | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0767910362
Release Date: 2002-11-12

Book Description

From the style contributor for the Today show and Style Channel cohost–a first-of-its-kind style guide for women on how to bring out the very best in the men they love.

He's made a name for himself as the master of makeovers, spreading style on MTV and the Today show and recently earning a place in Crain’s “Forty Under Forty” list of notables. Now Lloyd Boston gives every woman the know-how to make her man look his best.

Covering style from head to toe, Make Over Your Man includes a comprehensive quiz and is chock full of instructive charts, Q & As, a retail resource, and up-close photographs for transforming your Fred Flintstone into Fred Astaire. With his energizing humor, Boston guides readers through the ins and outs of everything from suits to casual clothes, outerwear, and even grooming. Knowing that diplomacy is key, Boston also explains exactly how to coax the boyfriend into tossing those high school sneakers and flood pants. And to top it off, ten candid celebrity makeovers are featured, including:
• Bobbi Brown and her husband, Steven
• Star Jones and her nephew
• Patti LaBelle and her son
• Cynthia Rowley and Alan Cummings
• Elizabeth “Survivor” Filarski and fiancé
• Tyra Banks and Dad

Fabulously illustrated with photographs by Len Prince, Make Over Your Man gives guys a new level of pride and confidence and gives women a date who will turn heads–for all the right reasons.

Customer Reviews:

What most men need to know.......2007-04-07

This book is just full of good information you need to know but aren't taught anywhere. I'm a man and I know that I look and feel more confident when I look as good as I can. This book tells you how to do that and it's practical too...not flashy - just classy. It's nice to know that my favorite shirts are broadcloth material - I now look for them in the stores or online. That standard shoes should include loafers, boots and a pair of wing tips - none of which I had before - but I do now - and they look great. That you should pay attention to the watch you wear - because others do. That you should wash your face twice a day, that you should shave after the shower so the room is steamy...If you are wanting to change your image to one of a well groomed, well dressed man, reading this book is a great start.

The must-have book for any man!.......2006-05-16

This book is designed to enable the caring woman to take charge of the dressing of the man in her life, and make him over. Filled with excellent pictures and tons of sage advice, this book covers everything from shoes to suit coats (no one wears hats anymore, apparently), and everything down to underwear and cufflinks, and even grooming tips. This is the must-have book for any man!

Let me just say that I found this to be a great book. Now, I am not a woman, but in truth a man can benefit enormously from reading this book. I found this book to be very informative, both in its broad outlines and in its details. I think that this is a great book, and I highly recommend it!

A whole new look..........2003-05-03

MAKE OVER YOUR MAN is a beautiful instructional book guiding women on how to dressing the men in their lives. The intent of the book is to take the average boring wardrobe and transform it into a whole new look bringing out the best in your man. It covers every wardrobe imaginable, even down to the basics, and offers tips on things such as manicures and pedicures, organizing a man's closet, and how to tie a perfect tie. Chapter by chapter, the book offers tips, instructions, charts, photographs and even one-on-one celebrity makeovers to give you all the tools necessary to arm yourself against readying your man for a whole new look. Some of the celebrity makeovers include Tyra Banks and her dad Don Banks, Patti LaBelle and her son Zuri Edwards, and Star Jones with three male friends.

I'd recommend this book to both men and women as a "must have book" that details fashion in a way that isn't boring, but instead colorful, fun, and takes the work out of convincing the guy in your life that a change is needed. The photography helps this book stand out from others sitting on the shelves.

Reviewed by Tee C. Royal
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

Fashion Bible for a "Lost" Soul.......2003-01-20

When I heard that your second book was coming out, I was so overjoyed. I just finished reading it on yesterday and wanted to write just to say thank you! You are definitely a God-send. I want you to know that your material and advice has helped cultivate who I have become in terms of my appearance. I didn't come from a "rich" background, from childhood I always dreamed that after I got my education, I wanted to have the appearance of all of those I had admired through the years. Your book has and will help me make the right decisions in regard to what to wear, when to wear, how to wear. I have just moved to a metropolitan area and "image is everything." I am so self-concious at times because I am from Oklahoma and we don't know the first thing about dressing. Moving, I feel so countrified when I go out, I never know if I am fitting in or not. Thanks for the time and effort you put in to helping "brothers" out on what they need to do. "Make Over Your Man," has helped me achieve an inspiration and confidence I need to continue to assert myself. Kudos to you!

Best of it kind.......2002-12-28

I bought this for myself (I am a man) because I saw excerpts on msn and I thought the writing style was excellent. The book did not disappoint. It reads well, has a lot of nice photos and a listing of merchants in the back. I would not follow the author's advice to the letter, because we all have different styles, but I picked up a lot of helpful information. Although I have always enjoyed shopping for clothes, I ended up with too many clothes, rather than just enough high quality items. I do think the book will have to come out every two or three years with new editions as styles change. For instance, Boston now champions flat front pants instead of pleats and leather soles rather than rubber. In general, he laments dressing down or "business casual." These things change, although he definitely stays away from trendy fashions in favor of more traditional garb. A thoroughly enjoyable and well-written book.

Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence--Boston, 1880-1960

Average customer rating:

Feminist look at family violence
Heroes

Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence--Boston, 1880-1960
Linda Gordon
Manufacturer: University of Illinois Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0252070798

Customer Reviews:

Feminist look at family violence.......2004-11-16

"Child abuse is not usually a product of unilateral brutality but of familial power struggles, shaped by extrafamilial social factors and historical change," argues Linda Gordon in "Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence." Those social and historical factors, the author contends, changed over time. So too did those activities that constituted abuse. One could substitute "wife beating," "child neglect," and "incest" in the place of child abuse in this sentence. Through a variety of sources--legal documents, social workers' case histories, and relief agency registers--Gordon examines how conceptions of family violence changed in Boston between 1880 and 1960, and why they changed. Her subjects are not upperclass families and individuals, but the lowest strata of Boston society. They are the Irish and Italian immigrants, the unemployed or underemployed, and the transient. To understand Gordon's analysis of family violence, it is important to understand feminism, male domination of the family, and gender roles.

The author argues that the one thing that changed slowly during the period was how society and social workers viewed the family, a view too often adopted by writers on the subject. Historians, she argues, tend to think of the family as a seamless unit headed by the breadwinning father. The mother and children each have their own roles to fulfill within the unit, but all activity and decision flows from the male head of the family. Gordon scoffs at this generalization, claiming that the family is not a seamless unit but an agglomeration of individuals with aspirations that often conflict. The failure of social workers in Boston to alleviate child abuse, child neglect, wife beating, and incest stemmed from their overemphasis on "stresses" and failure to acknowledge this underlying power structure of the family. These stresses--extreme poverty, alcoholism, and unemployment--contributed to outlandish behavior. But the inability of women to take independent action to combat the problems facing their families allowed bad behavior to flourish. Social workers, reflecting the beliefs of society, attempted to rebuild patriarchal families at the expense of female independence.

The pressure put on single mothers to reconstruct the patriarchal family through remarriage or reconciliation with abusive husbands, along with a similar pressures placed on married women to maintain a household even in the face of extreme abuse, exacerbated family violence. A vicious cycle emerged concerning women caught up in abusive families. For single mothers, they had to work for a living if they wished to care for their children and maintain a home. But in doing so, they left their children unattended or in the care of others. Social workers saw female employment as a potential form of child neglect and as a violation of patriarchy that required a variety of responses, from court actions to removing the children from the household. Women could survive through only two methods: quit working or get their man back in the house. Gordon argues that only during times when a strong feminist movement emerged did society begin to view family violence in its proper context, as a problem of power and gender relationships and not a series of social problems flowing from poverty, alcohol, and unemployment.

Gordon's ability to tease out information from scanty sources is amazing, and is probably the best aspect of the book. She found her greatest challenges in the nineteenth century records, a time predating the emergence of professional social work and its attendant requirement of extensive written case histories recording all aspects of the clients' lives. The author relates in several places that the only evidence she could rely upon consisted of a few lines scrawled in a musty ledger. But by putting together enough of these incomplete records, Gordon managed to reconstruct a better picture of what went on in the early days of Boston's relief efforts. Pictures showing neglected children add an additional poignancy to many of the heartrending stories of personal tragedy in the book.

A significant problem with Gordon's book is limiting her research to Boston, Massachusetts. Gordon's arguments that Boston's experiences with immigrants represented similar problems in other states is not completely accurate. Although she notes that the city's high immigrant population made it exceptional, she does not go far enough in explaining how much of an exception it was. Massachusetts was home to a huge number of immigrants, far more than any other area in the United States in the nineteenth century. The immigrants strained the state's resources to the breaking point, which might account in some part for many of the faults she finds with the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (MSPCC) and other agencies. The city and the state simply did not have the funds to deal effectively with the problem of family violence. The importance of the MSPCC to other social agencies in the country probably stemmed from the recognition that Massachusetts had more immigrants to deal with than anyone else.

A related dilemma concerns the sorts of institutions the author studied. While she made excellent use of the sources she consulted, there is a tendency to not look further. Family violence, from all indications, was at times a charged political issue. Gordon explains that the MSPCC was a political organization, supporting legislation at various times in its early history, and also possessing police powers to enter homes and remove children. The term "politics" in the title of the book refers to personal politics between family members, but examining the more common meaning of the word might have helped. Why not consult legislative records at the city and state level? Moreover, other institutions existed to assist the poor, especially poor immigrants. Political machines, although far from altruistic organizations, helped immigrant men find employment, and agencies run by ethnic groups also lent a hand. Immigrants to the United States did not have as many options to better their conditions as did native-born citizens, but they had more options than Gordon claims.

Heroes.......2000-04-06

Linda Gordon did a wonderful job at showing the growth of social services over time, however the book lacked a sense of committment.

Average customer rating:

Subtext Doesn't Count as Action
Oh, what is more foolish than the unrequited love of the old?
A clever and cruel marriage (4.4 on a scale of 1-5)
Finally, the Long Awaited All-Female David Mamet Play!

Boston Marriage
David Mamet
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

United States | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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Eleemosynary.
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Glengarry Glen Ross

ASIN: 0375706658
Release Date: 2002-10-08

Book Description

One of America's most provocative dramatists conquers new territory with this droll comedy of errors set in a Victorian drawing room.

Anna and Claire are two bantering, scheming "women of fashion" who live together on the fringes of society. Anna has just become the mistress of a wealthy man, from whom she has received an enormous emerald. Claire, meanwhile, is infatuated with a young girl and wants to enlist the jealous Anna's help for an assignation. As the two women exchange barbs and taunt their hapless maid, Claire's inamorata arrives and sets off a crisis that puts both the valuable emerald and the women's future at risk. Mamet brings his trademark tart dialogue and impeccable plotting, spiced with Wildean wit, to this wickedly funny comedy.

Customer Reviews:

Subtext Doesn't Count as Action.......2007-03-20

Two women live together in a "Boston Marriage" (a long-term living arrangement between women), trying to weasel their way up into high class society but never quite making it. The dialogue of this play is witty and quick. The scenes are scarce. And the subtext of the relationship tensions will appeal to any and all Bronte/Austen fans out there. For the rest of us, not so much.

-- Reviewed by Jonathan Stephens

Oh, what is more foolish than the unrequited love of the old?.......2007-01-31

This is a terrific Mamet piece, full of wit, charm, intelligent banter and social recognition weaved through characters whose casual cruelty and social awareness unite Victorian era sensibilities and the present "common-place" homosexual relationship.
A "Boston Marriage" may be a sexual or asexual partnership. In this case the love between Anna and Claire is combative, antagonistic and with the support of their Scotch maid Catherine, very funny and idiosyncratic. As if on an island of their own pleasure they claw and repost and debate their place in fashionable society. Anna has become a mistress and recieved a jewel and bank to satisfy. Meanwhile Claire has fallen for a younger woman, whom she enlists Anna into helping seduce.
Without revealing specific details of the story, they are enmeshed in a drama of drawing room proportions, in an era where hushed gossip was as deadly as candid pictures, and social standing in the eyes of the upper class meant...something.
I love Mamet. He constantly mesmerizes both viscerally and intellectually. He is a brilliant writer-here the language flows beatifully within the era's style, while retaining the patent he has on clipped, enigmatic and fluid dialogue, he is a seemingly infinite creative and theatrical artist. As a foray into a feminine world he has presented here a historical piece that is funny, able to unite eras a century apart, and ultimately lovely...

A clever and cruel marriage (4.4 on a scale of 1-5).......2003-11-17

David Mamet can definitely write about women and for women as demonstrated by his play "Boston Marriage."

The play's underlying story concerns two turn of the century women who have lived together in Boston in a "Boston Marriage" (a term that refers to a long term female couple usually involved both emotionally and physically). The couple live on the fringes of fashionable society, a world that they both care for deeply despite their unorthodox behavior. One woman, Anna, has recently taken on a wealthy lover to support their luxurious lifestle. The other, Claire, has recently become infatuated with a young woman (perhaps in retaliation for Anna taking a lover) and wants Anna to help her in her assignation. Meanwhile, both women delight in abusing their parlor maid, Catherine, whose name or nationality they never bother to remember.

Mamet's play sparkles because of its tart, crisp dialogue and brisk pacing. These women delight in tortuting each other, their lovers, their friends, and of course, their maid. Mamet neatly delineates the tremendous importance of class structure at this time: the women's snobbishness towards their immigrant help is absolutely appalling. Both women clearly crave acceptance by good society while at the same time flouting its rules.

I would recommend "Boston Marriage" to those who enjoy Mamet, female-driven books and theater, and modern plays.

Finally, the Long Awaited All-Female David Mamet Play!.......2003-01-08

For all the actress who have been waiting for great female characters from writer David Mamet, the wait is over! This is a lovely fantasy about a scandalous, tawdry lesbian couple circa 1900. Think Les Liaisons Dangereuses meets the women in Satre's No Exit. The dialogue is wonderfully paced, intensely comic, and astonishingly inventive.

Mamet seems to reinvent and reinvigorate his writing with this play. This is the playwright in a playful and endearing mood, writing about comically vicious and self-centered women who nevertheless win our hearts.

The plays seems to be reversing the classical notion of the nineteenth century rake (a womanizing man- often cast as the hero in historical romances). This time it is the women who are sexually controlling, on the hunt for new flesh, cavalier with romantic feelings, and casually selfish about creature pleasures.

There are lots of great two or three women scenes in this for actors' and directors' class work and showcase pieces. 90% of the play is a duologue between two women, with a maid who pops in and out.

Small Acts of Sex and Electricity
Average customer rating:

"That's like assuming you're willing to mutilate yourself because you sell knives for a living."

An interesting premise....

Lise Haines is a stunning writer!

A beguiling journey set in California

Not many reviews

Small Acts of Sex and Electricity
Lise Haines
Manufacturer: Unbridled Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 1932961275
Release Date: 2006-08-10

Book Description

With the sudden departure

of her best friend, Mattie recalls

all the years she has walked along

the edges of Jane's life. Now she

must decide whether to step as

courageously into Jane's full circle

as she has slipped into her bed.

Customer Reviews:

"That's like assuming you're willing to mutilate yourself because you sell knives for a living.".......2007-08-31

Imagine two friends so close they could be sisters, one married with a fabulous husband and two daughters, an innocent four-year-old and a contentious fourteen-year-old. Imagine that the wife, in an act of generosity or something more complex, walks away from her happy family one cloud-shrouded early morning on the Santa Barbara coast, leaving her friend to step into her life. When Franny is killed by a train while attempting to save her dog, Jane, her granddaughter, asks Mattie, an appraiser, to help sort through Franny's collectibles. Mattie and Jane, best friends since childhood, are thrown together, long-buried memories intensified by the grandmother's death. Such grief is unpredictable, Mattie accustomed to orbiting her friend's perfect life until Jane takes Franny's classic Jaguar and drives into the sunrise, Mattie handed the man of her dreams under impossible circumstances: "I understood the mind's attraction to the poison wish."

Sorely conflicted, Mattie is clearly enamored with Mike, but Jane intrudes on every thought, every action. There is no time when the absent Jane isn't present, burdening them all with unanswered questions, fear kept at bay by minutiae. While Franny's loss permeates the house, Jane's exit has upstaged even that tragedy, pulling all into the vortex of her inexplicable behavior. All are hostage- husband, daughters, friend- an impossible, tension-filled present with an unpredictable future. Like a suicide, Jane's departure seems inordinately selfish, as though her great idea of "trading lives" with Mattie is an act of revenge. Left to untangle Jane's damage, Mattie does not judge; meanwhile each family member retreats, hoarding their emotions, in stasis. Mattie is left to care for them all, aware of the impossibility of the situation. Now she "has" Jane's coveted family, but on untenable terms: "For a time we experienced life at an altitude-sick elevation."

Rather than plunging into the banal, Haines carefully dissects the outwardly-happy, inwardly-troubled dynamic of two long-term friends. Reconstructing the earliest days of the relationship, sharing Franny's largesse, boyfriends and finally Jane's husband, Mattie examines her attraction to the quixotic Jane since they first met. The painfully convoluted emotional ties to Jane are part of Mattie's adult identity, but Mattie can no longer indulge in immature what-ifs. Nor can she substitute herself for her friend. I specifically did not give the novel five stars: by the end, the long unraveling began to wear, each character obsessed with her own discomfort to the exclusion of all else. Dripping chlorinated water on an expensive Persian carpet, pouring bottles of bubble bath into the ocean, Mattie and the girls remain oblivious to their surroundings: "We left candy wrappers on countertops and coffee tables, strewn over rugs", the sympathetic turned self-indulgent. Too much ambient angst finally overwhelms- for me- the truly stunning prose that comes so naturally to this talented writer. Luan Gaines/20057

An interesting premise...........2007-02-16

Mattie and Jane have been friends since they were little girls, neighbors for part of the year on the Santa Monica beach. Both were escaping from dysfunctional families in those years, Jane summering sans parents with her grandmother Franny. And Franny wound up offering a second home also to Mattie while her parents sailed and mingled and drank cocktails. This pattern--Mattie playing the loved but resented (by Jane) third wheel--would repeat itself in the girls' adulthood. When Lise Haines's Small Acts of Sex and Electricity opens, Jane has been married to Mike for some fifteen years, and Mattie has been watching their relationship since its conception, as if with her nose pressed against the glass, debarred from a relationship that might have been, should have been hers: the "electricity" of the book's title refers in part to Mattie's attraction to Mike.

But Haines soon upsets the balance of this not quite comfortable threesome. After Franny's death, Mattie returns to the beach house to help appraise the property, and Jane takes the opportunity to walk out on her family, in essence surrendering her life to Mattie. Haines tells the story of what happens in the following weeks, how Mike and Mattie respond to Jane's offering, from Mattie's perspective, in the first person. Direct speech is introduced by dashes rather than quotation marks, and the speakers are rarely identified, which makes following conversations difficult at times. Haines's writing has a dreamy, indistinct quality to it, perhaps reflecting Mattie's state of mind after Jane leaves. The characters seem to float through the story, not addressing their problems directly, not communicating with one another effectively. Sometimes the writing is strained:

"I have no affinity for the afterlife. No desire to play with its rolling energy as Jane did. She treated death like a boy inside a tire at the top of a steep road. She stood in his path, unflinching, taunting his friends to let go of the rubber rim."

The premise of Haines's book is an interesting one, but I never came to care about the characters--a bunch of not particularly likable people doing not particularly likable things. They are more than two dimensional yet fail to come to life on the page. Book groups will enjoy dissecting the motives of the author's various principals, but in the end I don't think the book is likely to linger in one's memory. Not a bad read, but not a great one.

Debra Hamel -- author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece (Yale University Press, 2003)

Lise Haines is a stunning writer!.......2006-11-27

No one writes like Lise Haines. She creates characters of amazing complexity and tells their stories with sheer lyricism. This novel enchants, surprises, and redeems. The characters are real, with all-too-familiar human frailties. Haines is brilliant in her character portrayal of Mattie, whose borrowed life finally becomes authentically her own. Many thanks to a fine author whose transcendent talent teaches many lessons!

A beguiling journey set in California.......2006-11-22

I loved this book. As a reader I loved the flow of the story and the many precise, surprising details. Vivid images like the descriptions of the little girl Mona spinning in a circle, and Franny's wonderful collection of shoes kept me reading. But as a therapist I loved how this book captured the messy, uneven, disturbing experiences of life. The children's experience of loss when their mother Jane takes off echoes the narrator Mattie's experience of loss when her neglectful parents leave Mattie to fend for herself as a kid. There are lots of details that resonate like this. Also the book is set in California--one of my favorite places. I highly recommend.

Not many reviews.......2006-11-10

Seems not too many people read this book. Well they did themselves a favor. This book was filled with shallow characters and while seeming to promise an intriguing plot turned out to be a bore. I forced myself to finish it; don't ask me why.

Shattered Faith: A Woman's Struggle to Stop the Catholic Church from Annuling Her Marriage

Average customer rating:

Shattered What?
Very Interesting
Would be an interesting magazine article
THE DEFINITIVE GUIDEBOOK FOR FIGHTING AN ANNULMENT
A little Consideration

Shattered Faith: A Woman's Struggle to Stop the Catholic Church from Annuling Her Marriage
Sheila Rauch Kennedy
Manufacturer: Pantheon
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Religious | Leaders & Notable People | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Women | Specific Groups | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0679439951
Release Date: 1997-04-15

Amazon.com

Shattered Faith is a fascinating look at divorce within religion. The Roman Catholic Church still does not recognize divorce. Instead it resolves a couple's incompatibility by declaring a marriage illegitimate from the outset. While divorce ends a marriage, annulment erases it--a distinction not lost on a Sheila Rauch Kennedy and many other women with similar experiences. When Rauch Kennedy is forced into annulment proceedings by an ex-husband who seeks to prove that their marriage was based on false presumptions and therefore never really existed, what can she do? Despite the high profiles of the protagonists, this is a down-to-earth account of a woman's attempt to maintain her sense of worth in the face of a church bureaucracy blinded by pride and incapable of compassion.

Book Description

In 1993, Sheila Rauch Kennedy received a letter from the Boston Catholic Archdiocese announcing that her former husband, Congressman Joseph Kennedy, was seeking an annulment of their marriage. If the Church granted the annulment, the marriage, which had lasted twelve years, would be rendered nonexistent -- not simply ended, as was stated in the divorce decree, but invalid from the start. And their two sons would be regarded as children of an unsanctified union. Joseph Kennedy needed the annulment to remarry within the Church, and he encouraged his ex-wife to ignore the details. Stunned by the hypocrisy of the process and the betrayal of trust it involved, Sheila Rauch Kennedy was determined to defend the legitimacy of her former marriage.

Shattered Faith is the fascinating chronicle of that struggle, and of what Kennedy uncovered about the uses and frequency of annulments in the United States. Interweaving her own experiences with those of other women whose trust in the Church was shattered by annulment, she tells a story that will surprise, anger, and move readers of every faith.

Customer Reviews:

Shattered What?.......2007-07-01

In an otherwise well written book the author is hopelessly unaware of the subject about which she writes. Perhaps it is because she writes as an outsider (Episcopalian) and not as a Catholic. Her faulty premise is that annulment is the Church's reckoning that a marriage "never existed" and therefore is a de facto lie. This is simply untrue. When a marriage is annulled by the Church it is recognition that the marriage was materially flawed by dent of coercion, fraud, lack of free-will, lack of judgment, or some other grave misunderstanding or act--very similar to the grounds for divorce. At best annulment allows the divorced couple to restore communion with the Church, something Ms Kennedy had no interest in. At worst it gives the couple the opportunity to deeply reflect on their marriage, again something Ms Kennedy seemed uninterested in. The overwhelming sense from the author is not contrition or reconciliation but resentment: resentment of the Kennedy's, the Church, men in general (embodied by the male hierarchy of the Church), and tradition. The irony is that the very institution of marriage that Ms Kennedy thumbed her nose at (she filed for divorce after only 9 years of marriage) she asks the Church to have an even greater respect for. If you need more ammunition to loathe the Catholic Church read this book, but if you are looking for a balanced understanding of the complex, merciful, and redeeming potential for annulment then look elsewhere.

Very Interesting.......2004-10-28

I liked the use of anecdotes and the thorough detail about the behind-the-scenes conversations at the tribunal and the legal process. I thought the logical and philosophical arguments were sound. It was a bit longer a story than it needed to be. I did not like the ending in that she did not reveal the outcome of the appeal to the Rota. (Does anyone know?) The book is very candid and emotionally appealing. It makes a fair distinction between marriages which could be annulled (short-term, no children) and those which should not be, such as her own. Overall it is an engaging personal story that is buttressed with strong arguments that you may or may not choose to accept.

Would be an interesting magazine article.......2004-05-31

The book has enough material for a magazine article but is really stretching it to fill a book.

Sheila Raush is not Catholic, so neither annulment nor lack of annulment affects her day-to-day life whatsoever. Yet not getting an annulment does affect her former husband's life adversely by preventing him from participating fully in the practice of his faith. To me, her quest to block the annulment seems just plain mean.

Her poignant stories about Catholic women don't even apply to her circumstances (and they fill up the majority of the book). By objecting to their annulments, those Catholic women were willing to play by the same rules they expected of their ex-husbands -- no remarriage in the Church after divorce. Raush, however, has no impediments to remarriage because she is Episcopalian, but she isn't willing to free up her former husband so that he also can remarry in his church. Again, that seems just plain mean.

The annulment process in the Catholic Church is very private and Tribunals do not interview or expect testimony from the children. Rausch claims she is trying to protect her children by defending her defunct marriage against those mean old Catholics -- yet if she hadn't chosen to broadcast what was happening, her children wouldn't have needed to find out about it.

Raush seems to be a self-centered, mean-spirited woman who rationalizes the damage she is causing to herself and her family by claiming to be right -- but her arguments, while smart and logical, are irrelevant. She is not Catholic and the ordeal she is going through is largely the product of her own mind. It's too bad she doesn't put her energy and intelligence into a cause other than her own self-righteous indignation at a faith that isn't even hers.

THE DEFINITIVE GUIDEBOOK FOR FIGHTING AN ANNULMENT.......2002-04-04

Contrary to what others have said, this is NOT the story of Senator Ted Kennedy's ex-wife. It was actually written by the woman who was married to Joseph Kennedy, son of the late Senator Robert Kennedy, Sheila Rauch Kennedy. I could never have survived being dragged through the mess of an annulment by my ex-husband without this book. It is well written, painstakingly honest, and offers resources.

A little Consideration.......2001-06-28

Did Rauch even consider the effect that this annulment might have had on her sons? All her husband wanted was an annulment so he would be able remarry with good standing in the church. Was that too much to ask? She wasn't looking out on her sons' behalf, but she was looking out for herself. Rauch used them as an excuse to acquire what she wanted from her former husband, and she almost got it. Did she accomplish anything by writing this book? Maybe to those women whose husbands have treated them wrong, and whose annulment wasn't necessary in the first place, but she only caused more ruckus amid her family, and probably with those who truly care about her. This book should have never been written, and the annulment should have never been objected to.

Sing! Play! Create!: Hands-on Learning for 3- to 7-year-olds (Williamson Little Hands Series)

Average customer rating:

Easy crafts and activities for moms with little time and few supplies

Sing! Play! Create!: Hands-on Learning for 3- to 7-year-olds (Williamson Little Hands Series)
Lisa Boston
Manufacturer: Williamson Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Crafts & Hobbies | Arts & Music | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

Family Activities | Parenting & Families | Subjects | Books

School-Age Children | Parenting | Parenting & Families | Subjects | Books

General | Parenting & Families | Subjects | Books

Science Play!: Beginning Discoveries for 2-To 6-Year-Olds (Williamson Little Hands Series)
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Wow! I'm Reading!: Fun Activities to Make Reading Happen (Williamson Little Hands Series)

ASIN: 0824967801

Customer Reviews:

Easy crafts and activities for moms with little time and few supplies.......2007-06-26

I found this book to be very easy, it contains many crafts that you can do with little supplies, does not take a lot of time, and the kids love it. Also I found the singing and games to be useful for any mother who is trying to find her preschool or early elementary child something to do while they are at home.

Also the singing and games are great family activities.

A great value for the money.

Hollis Street Church, Boston: Records of Admissions, Baptisms, Marriages, and Deaths, 1732-1887

Average customer rating:

Hollis Street Church, Boston: Records of Admissions, Baptisms, Marriages, and Deaths, 1732-1887
Ogden Codman , Robert J. Dunkle , and Ann S. Lainhart
Manufacturer: New England Historic Genealogical Society
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Genealogy | Reference | Subjects | Books

General | Reference | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0880820756

Average customer rating:

Amazing, Highly Lyrical, Beautifully Picturesque Novel
Enjoyed it
Identity, race and family
This book is great!
Search for Identity

Caucasia: A Novel
Danzy Senna
Manufacturer: Riverhead Hardcover
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 1573220914

Amazon.com

A young girl learns some difficult lessons in Danzy Senna's debut novel Caucasia. Growing up in a biracial family in 1970s Boston, Birdie has seen her family disintegrate due to the increasing racial tensions. Her father and older sister move to Brazil, where they hope to find true racial equality, while Birdie and her mother drift through the country, eventually adopting new identities (Sheila and Jesse Goldman) and settling in a small New Hampshire town.

Birdie/Jesse tries to find her niche in this new world of eye shadow and gossip and boys, but she also wants to remain true to herself and find a common ground between her white and black heritage. She sets out to find her sister and reconnect with that part of her that has been lost for so long; the search takes her far from the settled, safe life she had in New Hampshire to a far more ambiguous, and unsettled, existence, one in which her own definitions of herself become muddled, and her search for her sister leads ultimately to a search for her own true identity.

Book Description

Birdie and Cole are the daughters of a black father and a white mother, intellectuals and activists in the Civil Rights Movement in 1970s Boston. The sisters are so close that they have created a private language, yet to the outside world they can't be sisters: Birdie appears to be white, while Cole is dark enough to fit in with the other kids at the Afrocentric school they attend. For Birdie, Cole is the mirror in which she can see her own blackness. Then their parents' marriage falls apart. Their father's new black girlfriend won't even look at Birdie, while their mother gives her life over to the Movement: at night the sisters watch mysterious men arrive with bundles shaped like rifles. One night Birdie watches her father and his girlfriend drive away with Cole-they have gone to Brazil, she will later learn, where her father hopes for a racial equality he will never find in the States. The next morning-in the belief that the Feds are after them-Birdie and her mother leave everything behind: their house and possessions, their friends, and-most disturbing of all-their identity. Passing as the daughter and wife of a deceased Jewish professor, Birdie and her mother finally make their home in New Hampshire. Desperate to find Cole, yet afraid of betraying her mother and herself to some unknown danger, Birdie must learn to navigate the white world-so that when she sets off in search of her sister, she is ready for what she will find.

Customer Reviews:

Amazing, Highly Lyrical, Beautifully Picturesque Novel.......2007-10-16

I gave this book 5 stars because it was truly an amazing, very original novel, and a debut novel that reads like a classic. I had read and heard a lot about this book, all good things, but I've only recently completed it. The only regret I have about the book is that I should have read it sooner!

With that said, the author paints a realistic, and yet haunting family portrait of an interracial family. Parents, who "miss" each other instead of "loving" one another. Both so lost in their own intellectual and social pursuits that they are blind to the changes their biracial children are experiencing and distance that is being created from them. The children are kind of left to figure out the world for themselves, for their world is unstable and often ambiguous. When their parents are forced to permanently split due to a "secret conspiracy" gone wrong and take only one child with them to different parts of the world, it causes a major shift in the lives of the children and in particular, the delicate psyche of Birdie.

The author did an amazing job of writing from the perspective of a young girl, staying in tune with her proper age. She also wrote such beautiful descriptions of some of the most basic every day life things and events as well as about the world that Birdie lives in during these years, that I found them to be almost lyrical and wonderfully picturesque in content.

My only complaint is that the book ended rather abruptly, and some issues brought up within the novel were not thoroughly explained. However, I am anticipating that the sequel to this book would clear that up. My thoughts on the ending could also be biased by the fact that I didn't want the novel to end. A great book!

Enjoyed it.......2007-10-05

Even though it took me awhile to get through it....it was a good read.
It dragged a little in places, but the story had lots of originality and great writing with great characters!

Identity, race and family.......2007-06-09

It is a reduction to say that this story concerns race. It's much bigger than that. America is a country of shifting identities. Are we Jewish? Black? White? Catholic? To what identity do we cling? This is the story of a little Black girl who can pass for White and does pass for Jewish while her mother is on the run. But it's the story of many of us who don't know who we are or change identities. We pass for cool, for educated for single. It is a story that completely pulls the reader in. We can't bear to put it down. Our young protagonist is heroic, she is determined to put her family back together and her own life. The writing slowly unfolds, pulls us in. This story is both exquisitely written and compelling. I recommend it to all of us who have ever looked in the mirror and wondered if we could pass for straight or for normal. When most of us are anything but. In the end, it's a story of reinvention, perhaps the most American idea of all. Kate Gale

This book is great!.......2006-03-23

I thought this book was so interesting that I couldn't put it down. Interesting story about a struggle for identity. A++

Search for Identity .......2005-12-30

Reading about Birdie's experience was painful for me. Though Birdie's story presents some pretty extreme circumstances, as a mixed race person with very light skin (white people often didn't realize I wasn't white), I could identify with a lot of what Birdie went through mentally and emotionally. I grew up during the sixties and early seventies, and, during those years, especially in certain parts of the country, the concept of multiculturalism wasn't really there in the way we are starting to see it today. Mixed race marriages and children were for a long time pretty revolutionary-at least it often felt that way (Maybe it's appropriate that Senna presents Birdie's parents as "revolutionaries" in her novel). If you had a black parent you were considered-and I think usually still are considered--black and, though like my siblings and I, you might live in the black community and see yourself as black, you didn't always feel accepted. Like Birdie, I spent a lot of time trying to prove myself and feeling defensive around other people whether they were black or white, because we didn't really feel as though we belonged anywhere. Our experience of white and black communities could not always be the same as that of a person who was not mixed or even the same as that of a mixed person who was darker skinned than we were.

A lot of the characters in Senna's novel are confused and ambivalent, because they are in relationships and circumstances that are not considered mainstream for the time and location of the story. Furthermore, since the story is told in retrospect from the viewpoint of a child between the ages of eight and fourteen years old, it makes a great deal of sense to me that certain things are as unclear to the reader as they are to Birdie. I think that this is the author's intent. Birdie, as a child would not know or even think to be concerned with certain things about her parents' relationship; she is justifiably confused about why her mother is on the run and can only echo what she heard from others or what she herself thinks from one moment to the next. Her terror at her parent's breakup, at the disappearance of her father and sister, and her mother's instability color her interpretation of events. She can't give us a clear picture of what's going on because she doesn't have it. Also, while I would also love to know more about Cole's experience, again, since this is Birdie's story, she can only speculate about Cole's experience and present it from her unique perspective. This doesn't invalidate Cole's experience.

Though it may seem to some readers that some of the relationships that Birdie describes are not relevant to the story, I think that they are very revealing and serve to emphasize the difficulty of Birdie's uncertain position. She has a pretty good idea of how Nick and Mona would react if the knew what she was, but she's afraid to confirm her fears by confronting them with that information-she's already seen how the white boys view and treat Samantha and how hostile the white girls are toward her as an outsider. Birdie feels like an outsider, but like most people doesn't want to be treated like an outsider. At the same time, she's aware that she's betraying herself, by hiding behind her identity as Jesse, though until the end she feels she has no choice. She and Samantha both deal with their situations in ways that allow them to survive within their environment. For them to become open allies would work against their survival in that environment. Most teen-agers would not jeopardize their chances at survival among peers who have already demonstrated how ruthless they can be in order to prove a point.

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