Product Description
From assistant to the doorman at Bonwit Teller to CEO of Bergdorf Goodman, Ira Neimark crossed Fifth Avenue unlike anyone else. Christmas 1938, when he began working at Bonwit Teller on 56th Street and Fifth Avenue, he had just turned 17. Mary Martin, the toast of Broadway, sang at Bonwit's exclusive 721 Club Christmas cocktail party where young Ira, in a snug bellhop uniform, greeted the rich and famous. Four decades later, as the new CEO of Bergdorf Goodman, he transformed the iconic Fifth Avenue department store from an old, dull, expensive and intimidating store, into a young, exciting expensive and intimidating store that became first in luxury and glamour. Among his stunning achievements: the reintroduction of Paris couture in the United States, dramatic showcasing of the great Italian and French designers, developing the best new American designers and elaborate promotional launch events featuring haute couture that lit the spark for Bergdorf s revival. Crossing Fifth Avenue To Bergdorf Goodman captures the magic of the fashion business at its most exciting moments. It is replete with intriguing, personal anecdotes about the world s most famous fashion personalities. Also included are insightful sections on Lessons Learned (in each chapter) covering the highlights of Ira Neimark s legendary success and featuring his words of wisdom on a variety of challenges. Only Ira Neimark could tell these stories and articulate the business lessons that made him the last man standing among the greats of fashion retailing lessons that continue to compel major multi-national companies to seek his counsel.
Customer Reviews:
The best retail read written so far!.......2007-02-19
I have read Ira Neimarks book twice. First for enjoyment and the for forsight!
Mr Neimark talks about how retail is constantly evolving and if you do not stay one step ahead, no matter what position you hold you can fall two steps behind. He gives first hand accounts of meetings with the leaders of the industry and how they helped shape the important role that retail plays in our country's economic development.
A strong and knowledgeable businessman who will take any company that he works for to the top along with anyone who wants to join him, he shows the reader that retail is fun, exciting and a tough business to be in, but with commitment and quality to excellence one can achieve their goals.
This is a must read for all associates at all levels in the retail field and for all professors in a retail curriculum.
Book Description
Sarah Raymond was an unmarried woman of twenty-four who in May 1865--barely a month after the end of the Civil War--mounted her beloved pony and headed west alongside the wagon carrying her mother and two younger brothers. They traveled by wagon train over the Great Plains toward the Rocky Mountains, with no certain idea of where they would settle themselves but a strong desire to leave war-torn Missouri behind and start a new life.
Days on the Road is the story of this remarkable journey and of the young woman who made it. Written on the trail and originally published in 1902, it is a tribute to all of the emigrants who made their way west and the tale of a truly extraordinary woman.
Customer Reviews:
Great Read!.......2006-11-10
This diary is well written and thoughtful. The detail is really vivid.
Absolutely wonderful!.......2006-09-16
I found this diary charming and informative. Having always had a fascination with the time period and wagon trains, I couldn't put this book down. By the end of the book, I was saddened by the fact that Sarah didn't continue recording her life in Montana. I felt as if I had known her personally and was touched by the whole accounting of her travels.
Depictions of life on the trail.......2003-07-20
Enhanced with a Foreword by Mary Barmeyer O'Brien, Days On The Road: Crossing The Plains In 1865 is the personal diary of Sarah Raymond Herndon, a young pioneer woman who, as the dust from the Civil War settled, left the battle-scarred state of Missouri with her family and traveled overland to the Rocky Mountains in search of a new place to live and a new life to build. Sarah's daily insights, her depictions of life on the trail, her descriptions of the hardships, the triumphs, and the evocations of her memories, combine to form a vivid and accurate image of pioneer life through the words of a pioneer who headed west to escape the ravages of the American Civil War to start her life anew. Days On The Road is a welcome and strongly recommended addition to 19th Century American Studies reading lists and history collections.
Average customer rating:
- Emotionally Stirring By A Most Literate Writer
- Happiness and sorrows of a truly literary person
- A Grief Understood
- A Grief Understood
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Crossing Highbridge: A Memoir of Irish America (Irish Studies)
Maureen Waters
Manufacturer: Syracuse University Press
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The New York Irish
ASIN: 0815606826 |
Customer Reviews:
Emotionally Stirring By A Most Literate Writer.......2001-06-21
I could relate to nearly everything that Miss Waters wrote about in Crossing Highbridge, because I came from that Irish Catholic enclave, I knew the Waters family long ago, and I went to Sacred Heart with Maureen's sister, Agnes.
Maureen Waters is a gifted writer who combines history, philosophy, religion, and the socio-econimic conditions in a working class environment in the 1940's and 1950's, with utter grace, and at the same time, the reader can experience some strong emotions of saddness and joy.
Happiness and sorrows of a truly literary person.......2001-06-21
I was able to identify with nearly everything Miss Waters wrote about her Irish Catholic upbringing in Highbridge, because I too came from the same place, and I knew her sister Agnes many, many years ago. However, if I had not had the privilege of knowing Maureen and her literary family, I would still have been able to appreciate the writer's gift of style where she combined gracefully, history, philosophy, religion along with the socioeconomic conditions of the 1940's and 1950's growing up in Highbridge.
A Grief Understood.......2001-06-01
This profoundly moving memoir of growing up Irish/Catholic/female in the midcentury Bronx began with the author's need to understand the loss of her son to accidental death by drugs and alcohol. As she puts it, "the drive to piece together cause and effect was a belief that I had far more power than I actually did for good or ill." She sifts the past out of psychological necessity, desperate, guilty, and finds ordinary treasure: in human characters - her father, an immigrant from Sligo, her mother from Mayo, a feisty and lovable little sister, Agnes, and, above all, in her beautiful and enigmatic lost child of the flaming red hair, Brian Patrick - and also in their brave and lonely human places (Highbridge on Hudson, Long Island). She looks back for clues to her loss from the perspective of a divorced single mother trying to juggle children and hold her own in academe (she's now a professor of English). Memory sifted through the prism of such luminous prose and honest emotion offers a gentle and moving consolation to this reader. The story of the author's Catholic journey, from insider - the parish was Sacred Heart - to outsider is told with devastating brevity. I'll never forget the final image of women's exclusion. It rings so true. The abyss is present in Waters' world, but to me this is a book of hope
A Grief Understood.......2001-06-01
This beautiful memoir of growing up Irish-Catholic-female in the Bronx at midcentury began with the author's tragic loss of one of her sons to an accidental death from drugs and alcohol. In order to survive herself, she must understand: "The drive to piece together cause and effect was a belief that I had far more power than I actually did for good or ill." The bereaved mother, who is also a professor of English, sifts her past for answers. She uncovers the treasure of human characters (her father, Daniel Waters, an immigrant from Sligo, her mother from Mayo; her rebel little sister, Agnes) in their brave and lonely human settlement (Highbridge on the Hudson). She looks back on the cost of parenting alone as a divorced young mother and trying to hold her own in academe. The consolation that memory - and Waters' luminous prose - makes for her and for this reader is profoundly moving. The story of her Catholic journey, in particular, the movement from insider - the parish was Sacred Heart - to outsider, is especially strong: she tells it with a devastating brevity and one final image that I'll never forget. It rings so true. This is a courageous book about loss in which you come to see that what remains is, after all, a matter of life understood and hope.
Average customer rating:
- Riveting
- Shanghai Quartet: The Crossings of Four Women of China
- Composing possible lives
- Great read --inspiring!
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Shanghai Quartet: The Crossings of Four Women of China (Emerging Writers in Creative Non-Fiction)
Min-Zhan Lu
Manufacturer: Duquesne University Press
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ASIN: 0820703222 |
Book Description
Steeped in the Chinese tradition of recording family tales and keeping the family register, Min-Zhan Lu gives us this moving and powerful memoir describing the lives of four women of China — her grandmother, her nanny, her mother, and herself. “I wrote these family stories hoping that you will someday want to read them,” she writes to her daughter in the book's opening lines. “I offer them to you as beginnings: notes on a lifeline of crossings for you to take over and work on.”
The complex emotional landscape of this book centers around Min-Zhan Lu — both the immigrant who has crossed over to America and the tale-teller. In each of four sections, she tells us the intergenerational story of these women, each of whom crosses over time, history, custom and geography to come into her own. This overall frame is a vehicle for a woman trying to recite the family stories for her daughter — partly to heal the complex divisions between them, partly to understand her own past and how it has shaped her identity, partly as an act of the larger love she longs to represent, partly to sing the past into the future.
But Shanghai Quartet, amazingly, is even more than such a vehicle for a mother-daughter dialogue and story. This book paints a less-than-familiar portrait of Chinese life in the last century. Here, as we come to know Min-Zhan Lu's family, we find credible lives, not propaganda or stereotypes. We see so much: a Chinese Catholic family in Shanghai; the events of the Cultural Revolution through a child's family experiences; the decision to come to America and be separated from family; and the next, postmodern generation of young Chinese abroad.
Customer Reviews:
Riveting.......2002-01-16
Shanghi Quartet found me in the footsteps of Min Zhan Lu. I found the book riveting - couldn't lay it down. I wanted to lift
the characters out of the book and spend some time with them over tea. This book is destined as a best seller.
Shanghai Quartet: The Crossings of Four Women of China.......2001-12-27
This is simply a beautiful book. I read it on a long flight to Australia and kept turning to my travel companion to say, "I love this book. You have to read this book."
When I got to my conference, I gave the book to the first person I met who was also writing about the people of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. I wanted to share it with everyone.
So, now I'm on-line to get a new copy. I don't want to be without it.
Composing possible lives.......2001-12-22
I meant to save this book for an upcoming long air flight, but after the first two pages, I couldn't put it down. Min-Zhan Lu's compelling stories of her life and that of her grandmother, nanny, and mother are much like her scholarship in composition studies: rigorous, sensitive, thought-provoking. She depicts herself and the other women in her family as devoted to crossings, travel, immigration, and shows what strengths and challenges arise out of such lives. As she tells and revises and retells these stories, she looks for hints and strategies for doing better to recognize those strengths and handle those challenges. Her quest to compose possible lives, for herself and her daughter, rendered in exquisite prose, inspires us to see our lives as writing projects, always open to rethinking and revision.
It's like reading Proust's Rememberance of Times Past, but not so long. Each detail is mined for its resonances, memories, connections, meaning in the past and in the future. What's the meaning of her parents' clasped hands? What does it mean to drink green tea? Why do people we barely knew sometimes come to mean so much to us? So much meaning in the small details of everyday life.
It's a great book for a book group to read - if you're like me, you will be dying to talk about it with friends as soon as you finish it. It's the best thing I've read this year, and I read a lot.
Great read --inspiring!.......2001-11-27
Shanghai Quartet is a wonderful book that gives a honest portrayl of life in China over the last century. Unlike other books of its kind, it gives voice to three generations of Chinese women and their struggles through the various political regimes.
This memoir also gives voice to a generation of Chinese immigrants who immigrated to the US in the early 80's. This generations has thus far been very silent and this book provides an accurate account of their experience.
In addition, Shanghai Quartet tells of a Catholic and aristocratic family in Shanghai that we rarely see in other books. I highly recommend this complex book -- it was a true joy to read!
Book Description
What could possibly impel a relatively privileged twenty-four-year-old American—serving in the U.S. Army in Germany in 1952—to swim across the Danube River to what was then referred to as the Soviet Zone? How are we to understand his decision to forsake the land of his birth and build a new life in the still young German Democratic Republic? These are the questions at the core of this memoir by Victor Grossman, who was born Stephen Wechsler but changed his name after defecting to the GDR.
A child of the Depression, Grossman witnessed firsthand the dislocations wrought by the collapse of the U.S. economy during the 1930s. Widespread unemployment and poverty, CIO sit-down strikes, and the fight to save Republican Spain from fascism—all made an indelible impression as he grew up in an environment that nurtured a commitment to left-wing causes. He continued his involvement with communist activities as a student at Harvard in the late 1940s and after graduation, when he took jobs in two factories in Buffalo, New York, and tried to organize their workers.
Fleeing McCarthyite America and potential prosecution, Grossman worked in the GDR with other Western defectors and eventually became, as he notes, the "only person in the world to attend Harvard and Karl Marx universities." Later, he was able to establish himself as a freelance journalist, lecturer, and author. Traveling throughout East Germany, he evaluated the failures as well as the successes of the GDR's "socialist experiment." He also recorded his experiences, observations, and judgments of life in East Berlin after reunification, which failed to bring about the post-Communist paradise so many had expected.
Written with humor as well as candor, "Crossing the River" provides a rare look at the Cold War from the other side of the ideological divide.
Mark Solomon, a distinguished historian of the American left, provides a historical afterword that places Grossman's experiences in a larger Cold War context.
Customer Reviews:
A Unique Account of an Escape To The GDR.......2005-03-06
Between the end of World War II and the erection of the Berlin Wall, millions of eastern Germans escaped to what was, or would become, West Germany. There was a lot less traffic in the other direction. This is the story of one man who fled the West and wound up "behind the Iron Curtain" in East Germany. American-born Victor Grossman (né Stephen Wechsler) was literally a card-carrying Communist until he was drafted into the US Army -- a fact he did not disclose on a form asking whether he had ever belonged to any subversive organizations. In 1952, as an American soldier stationed in West Germany, Grossman received a letter requiring him to answer charges that he had lied under oath. Instead, Grossman went to then-occupied Austria and swam across the Danube into the Soviet zone. After being detained by Soviet intelligence, Grossman was given a new life and identity in the "German Democratic Republic."
Grossman was, is and remains a true believer in Communism. Grossman tells us that he got a thrill when he saw his first Soviet soldier, with the red star on his hat. Grossman justifies the building of the Berlin Wall and minimizes the wrongs of the Stasi, who except for dissidents were "unpleasant but less frightening than now portrayed." The book is written from a Communist perspective, which again and again minimizes the wrongs of the GDR and magnifies the wrongs of the United States. Yet, Grossman's argument that German communism did not necessarily preclude democracy collapses upon closer examination. A big problem for the GDR is that it had to live cheek by jowl with a free-market economy. If, as Grossman claims, the Berlin Wall was necessary to prevent GDR-educated professionals from fleeing and GDR-subsidized goods from being sold in West Germany at higher prices, then the GDR would have to remain a closed state to function. And that meant that GDR residents would not have the ultimate freedom to "vote with their feet" and leave. Grossman voluntarily chose to live under communism -- other East Germans did not have that choice. Their "revolution," such as it was, was imposed by the Soviet Union.
Nonetheless, even someone like me, whose political views are 180 degrees opposite from Grossman's, found the book engaging. One reason is that Grossman's story is so unusual. Very few American servicemen fled to East Germany and fewer probably met or interacted with as wide a range of people, including foreign celebrities like Jane Fonda. Additionally, there are very few memoirs written by Communists who came of age in the 1940s: most are written by those from the "popular front" era of the 1930s or the New Left of the 1960s. This book takes the reader to factory life in Buffalo, concerts by Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger, and all over the GDR. And the book is well-written: Grossman makes the most persuasive case possible for the benefits of his adopted country.
My personal opinion is this: As an American, I'm frankly glad that Victor Grossman left the country. Anyone who dislikes the American system as much as he does, and goes AWOL from the US Army to East Germany at the height of the Cold War, should live elsewhere. As a reader, however, I'm glad to have been able to read his book. While the author's views are (in my opinion) wrongheaded, the book never fails to be fascinating.
An excellent and objective read.......2003-12-11
This is an excellent and unique work. It will not bore you in the least bit. Grossman presents a very human and objective picture of life in the first German socialist state. This is a very informative and interesting account and should be read not only by those interested in the GDR, but also by those interested in history in general, and those who enjoy a fascinating story. This work paints a very different picture of the GDR than the usual Western "totalitarian nightmare" type books. Highly reccomended.
Fills a historical void.......2003-08-31
This engrossing autobiography relates, first hand, what happened post WWII with the diehard leftists in the eastern blocs when their dreams of socialism came crushing down around them .
The author fled his native USA while in the army and swam the Danube to seek a better world.
An honest insight that has not previously been told.
Book Description
After the successful publication of his biography (1998) and his brilliant polar journal Farthest North (2000), Nansen has in the past years recaptured his reputation as 'a modern Viking' (Daily Mail) which he enjoyed a century ago. This book is an abridgement of the two volumes of journals he edited of his daring crossing of the icy, treacherous snow plains of Greenland. At the time, before his famous arctic journey, no one had ever succeeded in penetrating the depths of Greenland. His ideas for crossing, upwards with dogs which would be eaten on the way, and downwards by skiing, were received with scathing contempt as contemporary thinking favoured large expeditions with numerous servants for survival.
Book Description
From the coauthor of the million-copy bestselling Medicine Cards comes this riveting account of initiation into ancient wisdom and the healing power of a Native American shaman. Of Choctaw descent, David Carson has absorbed and sought out Native American spiritual knowledge since growing up in Oklahoma Indian country. He distilled some of that knowledge in Medicine Cards, the hugely successful divination system based on traditional animal medicine that became a New Age bestseller in the 1990s. Now, in CROSSING INTO MEDICINE COUNTRY, he tells the story of his initiation as a conjure mana ceremonial healerwith the Choctaw medicine woman Mary Gardener. For three years, he studied the arts of power plants and medicine animals, how to manipulate the layers of energy surrounding human beings, and how to use sacred tobacco in ritual, curing, and divination. Through Marys teachings, often conveyed in folk tales of the primordial healer Yellow Tobacco Boy, and through his own, sometimes mind-bending experiences, he gives us a glimpse into an alternate reality, in which health and illness express the balance between man and nature, and Western notions of physics do not always apply. A fascinating personal narrative, here is a work rich in spirit and Native American lore that will appeal to anyone interested in alternative beliefs.
Customer Reviews:
David Carson's Journey.......2007-09-06
I love this book. It was so exciting to be reading his journey into Native American Medicine. My sister, Debby Cody, is a reader of the Medicine Cards and I admire David's expertise and his boundaries of what is best for him.
A survey of Native teachings and health insights which blends a memoir with a set of special reflections.......2006-06-20
David Carson is of Choctaw descent and has studied Native American spirituality since growing up in Oklahoma Indian country, but his latest CROSSING INTO MEDICINE COUNTRY is something more than spiritual reflection. Here he pursues initiation as a ceremonial healer with Choctaw medicine woman Mary Gardener, studying plant and animal forces and human energy manipulation for three years. Health and spirituality blend in a survey of Native teachings and health insights which blends a memoir with a set of special reflections.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
Incredible Storytelling!.......2005-12-07
David, Thanks for sharing your gift of Storytelling!!
The entire book was incredibly mesmerizing -- couldn't put it down. The experiences Mr. Carson writes about with his teacher Mary Gardener are quite an adventure and very thought provoking. This book helped validate for me that there is so much more beyond this 3-D world we live in and to trust and accept what we see and feel in all of our experiences.
Mr. Carson speaks to bringing back our awareness to living in
harmony with the natural world and in so doing to see and feel the sacredness in all life. Maybe in reading this book more people will be able see the separateness we as a whole have created from nature and how being at One with all of life brings forth healing on all levels-- individually and for our dear Mother Earth.
This book really inspired me and touched my heart on so many levels. Great stuff!!
This is a keeper.......2005-10-25
I've had some extraordinary experiences reading this book. It feels like I'm there on the journey with him and some really amazing synchronicities have popped up again and again. Something like a holographic journey, this tale strikes a chord that goes straight to the heart of the reader. Great work, David Carson!
Crossing Into Medicine Country.......2005-10-13
David Carson has done an excellent job of sharing the life of an apprentice, and the experiences that come with earning the title of "Shaman". This book is a treasure, a deep walk with Spirit. David shares his knowledge and experiences in such a way that I too felt I was on the journey. I highly recommend this book to the serious student, and to the curious beginner. A masterpiece. Couldn't put it down. It will hold a sacred place in my library.
Amazon.com
This fascinating memoir chronicles Deirdre McCloskey's transformation from Donald McCloskey, an economist at the University of Iowa and married father of two, into the woman he finally accepted he had always wanted to be. McCloskey had been dressing in women's clothes since he was 11, but after his daughter went to college in 1994, the 52-year-old man grew increasingly aware that he was more than "just a heterosexual crossdresser." As he moved toward the decision to become a transsexual, his wife reacted angrily, and his sister tried twice to have him declared insane. The passages detailing McCloskey's ordeal within the psychiatric and legal establishment are as gripping as a topnotch thriller. But the memoir's deeper interest lies in the author's reflections on the nature of gender and identity. Donald was a macho academic who dominated every discussion, viewing conversation as an exercise in one-upmanship. As he surgically altered his appearance and began to take estrogen on the road to "The Operation," he found himself relating to people in a more conventionally female way: listening to others, considering feelings. "The hormones are working, he thought at first. Or was it merely that the real person could now stand up?... Biology or core identity?" There are no final answers to such questions, but McCloskey poses them with sensitivity and insight. --Wendy Smith
Book Description
We have read the stories of those who have "crossed" lines of race and class and culture. But few have written of crossing—completely and entirely—the gender line. Crossing is the story of Deirdre McCloskey (formerly Donald), once a golden boy of conservative economics and a child of 1950s and 1960s privilege, and her dramatic and poignant journey to becoming a woman. McCloskey's account of her painstaking efforts to learn to "be a woman" unearth fundamental questions about gender and identity, and hatreds and anxieties, revealing surprising answers.
Customer Reviews:
Crossing ... even further to the right.......2007-08-12
One of the most idiosyncratic, and least insightful, of all TS memoirs.
McCloskey's primary claim to fame is as a libertarian economist from the notorious "Chicago School." As expected, after spending $100,000 on (excruciatingly painful and often ineffective) surgery, McCloskey's neoliberal sensibilities are enraged by the Benjamin SoC gatekeepers. Her criticisms are sound. So far, so good.
Writing in a hardboiled style, McCloskey runs into prose problems. Odd use of highlights and italics repeatedly detract. She refers to herself in the 2nd person and rambles immoderately on shopping details in a dreary diary style. That is unfortunate because her experiences are actually compelling, with (squandered) Kafkaesque flash.
The main weakness, however, is ideological. McCloskey's view of gender is artificial and condescending. As a man, Don McCloskey romanticises (egoless, nurturing) women, placing them on an all-too-familiar pedestal - then, as a woman, she congradulates herself, from the pedestal, for her (presumed) civility, humility and empathy.
Thus, a premise every bit as dubious as "ethical" capitalism.
A Bizarre Biography.......2006-04-29
Am I the only reader disturbed by this memoir? First of all, I found the cover ghastly . . . almost macabre. The book takes us from McCloskey's childhood, through his early exploration of cross dressing, his marriage, and ultimately, his tortured decision to become a transsexual. His wife abandons him; she cannot accept the fact that her husband is having surgery to become a woman. Neither Don nor Deirdre can understand her angst.
McCloskey's own sister tries (unsuccessfully) to have him committed to a psychiatric institution.
Through it all, he has surgery after surgery, until he achieves the final remarkable result and becomes a woman economist. But at what cost? I am in favor of transsexual surgery in true transsexuals, but I was disappointed by the author's inability to come to grips with the sexual aspects of his transition or the confusion that it engenders in those close to him.
A Good Read, Illustrative.......2006-02-08
This is a great read. There aren't many trannsexual memoirs as honest and riveting as McCloskey's whirlwind tour, from married heterosexual to avowed transsexual.
My main complaint is straightforward. This memoir does not elaborate on contemporary scientific theories on the origins of transseuxality. Odd for a book that purports to be part memoir, part social science. I was hoping to find more information on autogynephilia--either an affirmation or denunciation of the concept. Where does McCloskey stand on this subject? He writes about gender as if it were disconnected from sex. How true is this in real life?
Despite the book's inherent limitations, it's a great read and suitable for a general readership.
The Economist is Transsexual.......2006-01-14
I was utterly fascinated by the author's transformation. At the start of the book we meet Donald McCloskey, a noted economist, as well as husband, father, and professor. We also learn that he is a compulsive cross dresser who walks around casually in women's clothing and heavy make up--at home. In his 50s, Donald had a major life epiphany and decided to become a transsexual. He has "the works"---breast implants, electrolysis, facial feminization, female voice surgery, and sex reassignment surgery. The results are evident in the photographs (before and after) in the center section of the book. "Deidre" is a tall, blond, large-boned transsexual. Arms folded, legs crossed, "Deirdre" is not exactly my image of the womanly ideal. But judge for yourself.
I found the author's literary style a bit unnerving. All those bold "thoughts" made me wonder who was speaking---Donald or Deirdre the Transsexual?
A Somewhat Limited But Useful Perspective.......2006-01-10
This is the story of one Donald McCloskey, a biological male who went on to become a full transsexual. He is now a transsexual as well as a widely published economist. I learned a lot from this memoir about the life of a transsexual who started out as a married, heterosexual cross-dresser. He erotically cross-dressed before becoming a transsexual.
I was hoping for a more theoretical framework. For example, there is NO mention of the major kinds of transsexuality. There is absolutely NO mention whatsoever of autogynephilia or of homosexual transsexuality for that matter. None. I also wondered about Deirdre's sexual life post-operatively, as I am sure other readers did.
I liked the photographs of Don and Deirde both pre- and post-operatively.
The narrative is a little hard to read because of all the bold face, mixed with regular face. I think this was meant to emphasize McCloskey's transsexual verus heterosexuality identity.
Despite the book's inherent limitations, I would recommend McCloskey's interesing memoir to anyone seriously interested in transsexuality. I would not, however, recommend it to anyone looking for a more formal treatment of either autogynephilia or homosexual transsexuality.
Amazon.com
It's a rare pleasure when a new author shows not only notable talent, but the skill and chutzpah to go where no one else has gone before. Daniel Robb takes a subject that many have considered but few understood--juvenile delinquents--and writes about it with rare insight. For a year and a half, Robb was a teacher on Penikese Island, off Cape Cod, where teenage boys are sent by the courts and social services to put six months between themselves and their chaotic daily lives. During this time they experience safety, a routine, hard work, and the decency and constancy of adults better adjusted than the ones they've known. The place is less a school, Robb writes, than "a family, or a way of life, a rhythm, a discipline, a music, with many voices of boys competing with my own for ownership of the tale." The boys have varied résumés: Mose shot a man who threatened him one night; Edward torched a boat for money; Alan is the king of substance abuse; Burt's parents have both been in jail since he was 7. But Robb finds that they all have a number of things in common--childhoods fraught with so many uncertainties that they never learned cause and effect, the lack of a father's guidance--the same things, it turn out, that plague Robb's own heart.
Robb has a gift for evoking their natural surroundings on the island in a language that resembles poetry while capturing the cadences and tribulations of his surly yet charming students with perfect pitch and clear-eyed sympathy. Not only does the dichotomy make for compelling reading, it works on the kids as well: Ned, the longhaired metalhead, gives CPR to a mouse and actually revives it; Wyatt, who stole cars out of boredom, considers his absent father's legacy after reading a Gary Snyder poem. Robb is a literary voyager in the most unlikely of places, and, in the end, reveals that even boys such as these have a poetry all their own. --Lesley Reed
Book Description
Off the coast of Cape Cod lies a small windswept island called Penikese. Alone on the island is a school for juvenile delinquents, the Penikese Island School, where Daniel Robb lived and worked for three years as a teacher. By turns harsh, desolate, and starkly beautiful, the island offers its temporary residents respite from lives filled with abuse, violence, and chaos. But as Robb discovers, peace, solitude, and a structured lifestyle can go only so far toward healing the anger and hurt he finds not only in his students but within himself.
Lyrical and heartfelt, Crossing the Water is the memoir of his first eighteen months on Penikese, and a poignant meditation on the many ways that young men can become lost.
Customer Reviews:
A brilliant literary journey as well as a coming of age novel.......2005-09-11
As I read this wonderful book by Robb, I mused that I wish I had been able to teach it at the University where I taught Young Adult literature teachers of young adults. So much of the YA literature offers "insider" stories, but never seems to give the idea that there is a way out, often leaving readers feeling hopeless and helpless in our modern world. This remarkable book offers us a true glimpse into a modern young person's problematic life, and yet shows us that there are always choices, always people like Dan to offer a better way.
One thing that truly impressed me was the subtle, never over-wrought literary allusions to such writers as Henry David Thoreau and Mark Twain. Daniel Robb went to the Island to live deliberately, to simplify, to get in touch with himself, the core of his being, and to reach out to some of the troubled young men of our current world. Furthermore, the entire story is built on a the extended metaphor of the story of Beowulf. Robb informs his readers at the end of his book just how the ancient story of Beowulf is anything but dead literature--it still resonates in our modern world. The readers of this excellent memoir will be given as much as the subjects of the story, and this reader is indeed grateful to Daniel Robb for his insight and his fine writing. Dr. Janice E. Patten
Couldn't get into it.......2004-03-09
As my title states, I just couldn't get into this book, even though I work with kids. I didn't finish it. I thought it was sad that the school's success rate with the kids wasn't much better than the prison system's success rate. It seemed that the school administration was proud of the fact that they didn't have any professional counselling for the kids, and I'm not so sure that's something to be proud of.
Intesecting Worlds.......2001-12-18
Dan Robb's memoir criss-crosses the worlds of the Pennikese bad boys--his students; of his own memories of a sometimes tempest-tossed adolescence; of his adult role of teacher in uncharted territory; and of an island--sere and beautiful, immutably changing with the seasons and with the boys who come and go--a place isolated yet self-contained, severe and yet secure, once "home" to lepers, now a prison-home for boys perched on the brink of social leprosy.
Robb's beautifully descriptive book carries the reader back and forth among these intersecting worlds while limning sharp yet fleshy portraits of the boys, each of whose stories grabs and engrosses. This is a book--yes, for teachers who know, or are learning, that the best kind of pedagogy is through memory, storytelling and the imaging of new worlds; for those concerned about how to treat and heal our outcast and abandoned children; and for those who, along with their interest in a critical and wrenching problem, also take pleasure in the work of a gifted teacher/writer/artist.
Intesecting Worlds.......2001-12-18
Dan Robb's memoir criss-crosses the worlds of the Pennikese bad boys--his students; of his own memories of a sometimes tempest-tossed adolescence; of his adult role of teacher in uncharted territory; and of an island--sere and beautiful, immutably changing with the seasons and with the boys who come and go--a place isolated yet self-contained, severe and yet secure, once "home" to lepers, now a prison-home for boys perched on the brink of social leprosy.
Robb's beautifully descriptive book carries the reader back and forth among these intersecting worlds while limning sharp yet fleshy portraits of the boys, each of whose stories grabs and engrosses. This is a book--yes, for teachers who know, or are learning, that the best kind of pedagogy is through memory, storytelling and the imaging of new worlds; for those concerned about how to treat and heal our outcast and abandoned children; and for those who, along with their interest in a critical and wrenching problem, can also take pleasure in the work of a gifted teacher/writer/artist.
Heartwrenching and hopeful.......2001-12-11
In this wonderful book, Dan Robb has managed to write about his experience teaching troubled boys with soul and without sentimentality. The rawness of his experience teaching on an isolated island off of Cape Cod, and the soul searching it prompted, makes for compelling reading no matter how much time you spend thinking about or working with kids. As the mother of a small boy, I also felt that reading this book was a way of learning about how to be a good parent to my child. I recommend this book with all my heart, and hope that it touches you as deeply as it did me.
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