Average customer rating:
- good read - interesting technique - sometimes dense
- Wonderful.
- Brilliant and Moving
- Some Lovely Set Pieces
- A good story, but not a great one
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A Desert in Bohemia
Jill Paton Walsh
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Press
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Knowledge of Angels
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Water for Elephants: A Novel
ASIN: 0312262639 |
Book Description
It is 1945. Somewhere in Central Europe, in the aftermath of violence and confusion, a terrified and bloodstained young woman, Eliska, emerges from the forest to take refuge in an apparently abandoned castle. Soon she is joined by others-the idealistic Jiri, the sinister Slavomir and his partisans, and Count Michael Blansky, who is the castle's ancestral owner.
But the war has changed things forever. In a storm of ideological change, the existing order and the aristocratic heritage of ten generations are brushed aside by the arrival of Communism, and Count Michael must join the flood of refugees if he is to survive. He leaves behind a legacy that will entangle those involved for the next forty years in more ways than they can possibly imagine.
As divided post-war Europe unravels around them, communities are destroyed, families uprooted, and the ties of trust, friendship, and duty that bind them together are broken down. Told through the eyes of nine characters who live through the forty years between the end of the war and the fall of Communism, A Desert in Bohemia is a complex and enthralling testament to the power-and powerlessness-of the individual in challenging times. By the time the Berlin Wall comes down, their lives will have been battered, broken, and made whole once more.
Customer Reviews:
good read - interesting technique - sometimes dense.......2006-01-22
The opening chapter pulled me right in with its immediacy and intrigue. Nothing is sure. Every description adds to the shadows and vagueness. In the end, though, the book didn't quite live up to my hopes as a novel. But the book is still a great read. The characters are expertly painted and the narrative that examines events from the eyes of different people through different times is interesting. The questions posed are important and sometimes get in the way of the story. The author's skill is apparent but I stumbled from time to time over the narrative. Read in light of and author like Sarte whose novels are a thin veil for his philosophical studies the work makes more sense.
Wonderful........2003-02-09
I just finished this book and it is absolutely wonderful. It portrays the same event through diffent eyes and times, and the end result is not a grand resolution, but life. I will read this book again.
Brilliant and Moving.......2002-04-09
I cannot recommend stronly enough Jill Paton Walsh's gripping and edifying novel of communism in Czechoslovakia after WWII "A Desert in Bohemia". It is a "must read" for everyone from age 14 to 94.
The strength of the novel derives not just from the historical aspects, but from the nine interwoven characters who are all compelling and haunting.
Some Lovely Set Pieces.......2002-04-09
I recognized the title of this book immediately as having been taken from my favorite Shakespearian play, "The Winter's Tale." Since I love that play so much I thought I just might love this book as well.
"A Desert in Bohemia" is set in the fictional eastern European country of Comenia during the years between the appearance of the Iron Curtain at the end of World War II and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
"A Desert in Bohemia" includes a cast of characters...this is essentially an ensemble book...however, the first character we meet is Eliska.
The year is 1945 and Eliska, the only survivor, is emerging from the common grave where more than 300 of her fellow villagers lie dead. Frightened and bloodstained, Eliska makes her way to what she believes is an abandoned castle and finds that it is not abandoned at all...there is a baby inside. The castle is the ancestral family home of the Blansky family and, although it is not entirely deserted (bread is rising on the table and milk is warming on the stove), it does contain many secrets.
Only a few hours later, Jiri, an idealistic young communist makes his appearance in the house and, shortly after Jiri, we meet Count Michael Blansky, the castle's owner. Next to seek refuge in the house is Slavomir, Jiri's Red Army comrade. Slavomir is just as dedicated to the cause of communism as is Jiri, although he is driven primarily by a need for power.
Growing unrest (and the false charge of being a Nazi sympathizer) causes Count Blansky to feel the need to leave the house (and Comenia) and he soon flees to England and seeks asylum with his son, Pavel. Blansky's neighbor, Frantisek Konecny, however, chooses to remain and his life will become entwined with the lives of those now living in the Blansky castle.
Paton Walsh certainly puts her remaining characters through much trauma: forced labor, torture, imprisonment, betrayals, terror, corruption of all kinds and even forced psychiatric hospitalization.
Although I didn't think this book quite came together as it should have, it does contain some lovely set pieces. The saddest occurs when Count Michael, who has been living near the border of Comenia, manages to gain surreptitious entrance to that country with his granddaughter, Kate, in an effort to have one last look at Libohrad, his ancestral home. What he finds instead is heartbreaking and it involves Eliska, Jiri and the baby found in the castle, now a young woman named Nadezda.
The characters' stories do intertwine very nicely and Paton Walsh does a good job in bringing philosophical questions to her narrative without sounding heavy-handed. But the book does seem to change its focus near the middle, or just before. What began as a marvelous book of ideas and of the effects of communism on a disparate group of characters, becomes a thriller instead. It was much better as a book of ideas.
The ending of the book also presented problems for me. I found the rather happy ending experienced by most of the characters to be too pat, too hopeful and almost too "sweet." I would have preferred to read about a more realistic portrayal of communism and circumstances in eastern Europe today.
"A Desert in Bohemia" isn't a bad book at all, but neither is it an outstanding one, or even one above the ordinary. It has some lovely set pieces and some memorable scenes. It is well-written, but for me, at least, it just didn't come together. It just didn't gel.
A good story, but not a great one.......2001-02-28
This book although competently written, did not live up to my expectations. Scenic descriptions are adequate. The opening is strong and full of promise. I also liked the final chapter and the story resolution, but the big middle lags. Walsh knows how to hit all the right notes as she interweaves the lives of two families from post World War II Czechoslovakia through Communism and the breakup of the Soviet Union: the expatriot issues, the ideologic clashes, Nazism versus Communism versus capitalism, the breakup and reuniting of families caught in the wave of political history. She even gives a plausible explanation of the psychological motivation of each character. Yet, the result is emotionally unsatisfying. It as though these characters walked across a stage and you were told all about them, assured of their complexity, but never got inside their skins. The plot requires tension and an emotional response within the reader. I felt like I was reading an instructive young people's story, but as an adult I wanted more. I didn't want the author to hold back. This is supposed to be an adult novel. Also, the happy outcome for most of the main characters seems too easy in light of history. Finally, I couldn't get past the feeling that the Comenians (from a fictional region of Czechoslovakia) were really Brits in disguise. This may sound unfair, but in a like comparison of another recent Cold War novel by British author, Martin Booth, "The Industry of Souls", there is no cross culturism in the characters. They talk and act the way one would expect. However, A Desert in Bohemia is worth reading for the philosophical and psychological issues that it raises, and which are still timely in the New Europe.
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The Deserts of Bohemia: Czech Fiction and Its Social Context
Peter Steiner
Manufacturer: Cornell University Press
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The Joke (Definitive Version)
ASIN: 0801437172 |
Book Description
Czech fiction in the twentieth century has been deeply implicated in the nation's political life, and often serves as a conduit for its authors' social ideas. Through a series of brilliant and powerful readings of major Czech texts in both literature and history, Peter Steiner challenges the view that literary works can be treated as aesthetically autonomous products distinct from historical events. Instead, in a book distinguished by its broad theoretical sweep and attention to telling detail, he gives evidence again and again of the ineluctable bond between literature and politics.
Steiner engages six central works ranging from novels to government documents; all, in his view, purvey ideological fictions that exerted significant social influence after they appeared. He begins with Jaroslav Hasek's 1920s novel The Good Soldier Svejk, whose antiauthoritarian protagonist was widely emulated during the Nazi and communist regimes, and ends with Vaclav Havel's play The Beggar's Opera, through which Steiner explores the social role of Czech writing in the 1970s. He also considers Reportage, by Julius Fucik, which announces itself as a documentary of the Communist party's heroic struggle against the Germans, but is, for Steiner, a fiction arising out of Marxist-Leninist ideology; Karel Capek's Apocryphal Stories; Milan Kundera's novel The Joke; and the 1952 show trial of Rudolf Slansky, the General Secretary of the Communist Party.
Customer Reviews:
Hooked on Harry.......2007-09-11
Jim Butcher is a great writer. His Dresden Files series is as fresh at Book 5 as it was at Book 1. The books can stand on their own, but really flow beautifully when read in order. Death Masks contains references to religious articles (in particular, the Shroud of Turin)and religious faith, but manages to treat different ideaologies and beliefs with respect. You have to respect an author who can do that!
The Vampires, the Fallen and the Shroud.......2007-09-02
Death Masks (2003) is the fifth urban fantasy novel in the Dresden Files series, following Summer Knight. In the previous volume, Elaine helped Harry reach the Table. The spell on Lily Unraveled. Meryl took out Talos and Toot-Toot had his pixies gang up on Aurora.
Dresden woke up in his own bed in a very clean apartment. The new Lady Summer had provided him with a Brownie cleaning crew and the new Summer Knight had fixed the Blue Beetle. Elaine kissed him on the cheek when she left.
In this novel, Harry is on the set of the Larry Fowler show, trying hard to suppress his magic. He had been trying to talk to Mortimer Lindquist and the psychic had insisted on meeting here. In a few minutes, they are going to be interviewed by Larry. Later two more mystery guests will join them.
Larry and the audience enjoy laughing at the guests's babble of seances and magic. During the break, Harry asks Mort about Susan and learns that she is definitely alive and has been in Peru. After the break, Larry introduces the other two guests. One of them is Duke Ortega of the Red Court vampires. Harry's control slips and his magical field takes down one of the TV cameras with a flash and smoke.
While the stage crew rolls off the defunct camera, Ortega tells Dresden that he has come to talk to him. Then the host conducts a little more discussion of the superstitious belief in magic. A second camera blows out and Ortega continues his conversation with Harry. He has come to face Harry in single combat. The suppression spell finally breaks down and the whole studio goes dark. Harry agrees to the challenge and then the emergency lights come on, but the fire alarms start whooping.
Outside the studio, the other mystery guest -- Father Vincent from the Vatican -- also wants to talk with Harry about a job. Father Forthill of Saint Mary of the Angels has referred him to Harry. As they walk toward the Blue Beetle, some gunman starts shooting at them with a silenced pistol.
Harry digs his shotgun out of the trunk and the gunman retreats, but still fires hid pistol in their direction. When that weapon runs out of shells, Harry hustles the priest into his car and putts out of the parking garage. On the way out, Harry notices several armed man and recognizes one as an enforcer for Johnny Marcone.
Father Vincent directs Harry to a motel near the airport and explains the case. The Shroud of Turin has been stolen and is probably in Chicago. Father Vincent wants Harry to find it.
In this story, Susan returns to Chicago with Martin, a coworker in the organization that Susan has joined. She has changed and is now strong enough to fight off a Red Court vampire. But she still has the Hunger and lusts after Harry. Of course, a really good wizard should be able to work around these difficulties.
Murphy calls and asks Harry to come to the Cook County Morgue. Murph introduces him to Waldo Butters and then they view a corpse without head or hands. The man had been found under a freeway overpass. Despite the horrible mutilations, he had apparently died of the Plague and other diseases. Harry examines the corpse more closely and finds a tattoo on the inside of the biceps.
As Harry is leaving the hospital, he encounters a bear-like thing and runs back toward down the alley. The thing chases him, but an old man steps out into its path and swings a katana at the beast. Then a young Russian joins the fray with a saber. Finally, a large man with a broadsword drops in and cuts off Ursiel's head.
Harry has been rescued by the Knights of the Cross, including his friend Michael Carpenter. The other two Knights -- Shiro Yoshimo and Sanya -- have come to Chicago to protect Harry from the Denarians, an order of Fallen Angels bound to thirty pieces of silver. The Denarians want Harry's soul and the Knights want him to drop the case to save himself.
This story takes Harry from the harbor to the downtown Marriott to Undertown to Wrigley Field to the O'Hare chapel. Then he gets to take a train ride. He finds himself fighting with vampires and the Fallen. Although the scenery is great, the creatures are really bad.
Highly recommended for Butcher fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of Fallen Angels, preternatural creatures, and a really stubborn wizard.
-Arthur W. Jordin
Beginning to find a deeper, darker direction.......2007-06-05
Faster paced than Book 4 of "The Dresden Files", "Death Masks" seems to set Harry on a darker path. With the return of some favored characters from past books (Both Thomas and Michael appear), the plot moves along quickly as the mythology of the series as a whole develops a new facet.
The series as a whole seems to be more confident in its footing and to have greater direction in those earlier in the series...and it's still a fun ride.
One of a Kind.......2007-05-19
It's been a long time since I've read a book this amazing. To be more specific, it was when I first read "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." That was seven years ago.
I forgot how good it feels to fall in love with a book.
Jim Butcher has managed to weave together everything I could possibly want from a story. His plot is well-paced, his hero is astoundingly witty, and his action scenes make me grip the pages of the book with sweaty fingers. There's beauty in every paragraph.
In "Death Masks," many of my favorite characters make a return, such as Michael (*finally*, a Christian character who is neither evil nor insane) and Thomas (how can anyone *not* love an ambiguous vampire?). We're also introduced to several new characters who are every bit as delightful as the protagonist himself. I even enjoyed the presense of some returning characters I did not like in previous books.
When I finally put "Death Masks" down, I sat in silence for several minutes, just thinking about what a great story I'd finished. Thank you, Jim Butcher.
Death Masks.......2007-05-12
Very good book, I read them all, the Dresden Files, with bated breath.
Linda Sheean
Product Description
Fantasy: For Harry Dresden, the only wizard listed in the Chicago phone book, when it rains, it pours. In fact, it pours toads, always a sign something bad is about to happen, But Harry takes such omens in stride, given that his rattletrap VW Bug needs constant upkeep, and his 30 pound guard cat wants regular meals.
Customer Reviews:
Two good stories, but so very different.......2007-09-11
This volume contains two very good but oh-so-different stories that represent Butcher at his finest up to that point. His books get better with every one he publishes.
Summer Knight is the almost light-hearted story about how Dresden gets caught up in a power-struggle between the two faerie courts. The plot is original and off-beat and gives Murphy a much more active role than she's had before in the battle between good and evil. The final battle, surreal as it is, makes you feel like you're there. And, in true Butcher style, you have to break off from reading some very tense passages in order to laugh, either at something Harry has to say or at some insanely clever and amusing new twist.
Death Masks is an altogether darker work, focusing on demons rather than faeries. The end of the world is once more a very real possibility (when is it NOT if Harry Dresden has to get involved) and to make matters worse for Harry, Susan Rodrigez is back on the scene. Let the angst begin! Harry makes some new friends, fights alongside some old ones, and has his life changed forever by when he makes a split-second decision to protect a child.
Butcher keeps getting better, as he proves with every successive novel. Summer Knight and Death Masks show a decided improvement over earlier works (although Death Masks contains what I consider a needless and overly-graphic sex scene that I can't even call a "love scene"). Reading these made me impatient to see what Butcher would have for us next.
Excellent series.......2006-07-12
This is a special edition omnibus of the fourth and fifth books of the Dresden files--available only from the Science Fiction Book Club or second hand.
Amazon.com
With a cannibalistic mountain man menacing New York City in 1845, who better to curb the butcher's appetites--permanently--than the one man perhaps best prepared to understand his macabre nature: Edgar Allan Poe? That's right, the same impecunious poet and editor who was responsible for "The Raven," and has appeared in two previous historical thrillers by Harold Schechter (1999's Nevermore and 2001's The Hum Bug), returns in The Mask of Red Death to stop a serial slayer known for first scalping his victims, then (yikes!) consuming their warm livers. With Manhattanites in a vengeful frenzy, ready to string up just about anyone conceivably to blame for these atrocities (even an indolent Crow Indian chief living among showman P.T. Barnum's stock of human attractions), it falls to Poe--who is connected to at least two of the victims--to find and foil the fiend.
Fortunately, this faint-hearted versifier has the help of renowned western scout Christopher "Kit" Carson, who's come east with his mute, 5-year-old son on the trail of a red-headed renegade known as "Liver-Eating" Johnson--the killer of Carson's Arapaho wife. Is Johnson to blame for all of Gotham's recent barbarity? Or is there another hand behind the destruction not only of young girls, but of a wealthy albino who'd asked Poe to authenticate a document of historical and political import, and an author who had taken umbrage at Poe's lampooning of his work? Schechter, known for his true-crime books as well as his mysteries, is unsparing in his explications of violence. Yet it's in the service of re-creating pre-Civil War New York's frequently dangerous conditions, and ensuring that no plot turn is less than perilous. Poe shows here both a brilliant mind (he seems to have committed an entire thesaurus to memory) and a beleaguered spirit (he must do without physical intimacy from his "ethereal" but sickly wife, who also happens to be his young cousin, and he struggles against his weakness for alcohol). The combination makes him a truly singular sleuth, whether he is facing thugs determined to wreck Barnum's American Museum, or trading trivialities with a ventriloquist who proves to be no dummy. If only Carson were so well developed; instead, he comes off in Red Death as a B-movie extra, sidling onto the scene whenever an altercation is in the offing. Western history buffs will recognize the liberties Schechter has taken with facts surrounding Carson and Johnson, but that shouldn't spoil their appreciation of the raucous drama and rich wit to be found in these pages. --J. Kingston Pierce
Book Description
Suspense, intrigue, atmosphere, and vivid historical detail combine into a thrilling ride through nineteenth-century New York City in The Mask of Red Death. Harold Schechter delivers both a wonderfully accurate portrait of a city in turmoil and an irresistibly appealing depiction of his amateur sleuth Edgar Allan Poe, mirroring the master’s writing style with wit and acumen.
It is the sweltering summer of 1845, and the thriving metropolis has fallen victim to a creature of the most inhuman depravity. Found days apart, two girls have been brutally murdered, their throats slashed, viciously scalped, and–most shocking of all–missing their livers. Edgar Allan Poe, despite what the tenor of his own tales of terror might suggest about his constitution, is just as shaken and revolted by these horrendous crimes as the panic-stricken public. Suspicion of the scalper’s identity immediately swirls around the most famous “redskin” in New York, Chief Wolf Bear, one of the human attractions at P.T. Barnum’s American Museum. Certain that Chief Wolf Bear is innocent, Poe has deduced that the city is concealing a cannibal somewhere in its teeming masses, one with an ever-growing appetite for human prey.
Before he can investigate his theory further, Poe stumbles onto the scene of a third gruesome murder. Poe recently met William Wyatt when he agreed to look at a document for Wyatt to determine the authenticity of the purportedly famous handwriting on it. Now Poe finds Wyatt in a pool of blood, his scalp removed. How, Poe muses, are Wyatt and his document connected to the two slain girls?
As frenzied emotions over the murders reach a fevered pitch, Kit Carson makes an appearance. The famous scout has been tracking the “Liver Eater” since the man killed his wife months ago. Together, Carson and Poe make an odd sleuthing team, but their combined wits are formidable. The trail they uncover reveals a dark secret more powerful than anything they could have imagined– one that may reach the upper echelons of politics and privilege.
Download Description
Chapter One
There are certain subjects in which the interest is all-absorbing. In our own country, stories of frontier captivity¿of Western pioneers taken prisoner by the Indians¿have always exerted a singular fascination. From the days of the earliest settlers, firsthand accounts by survivors of this harrowing ordeal have invariably been among the most popular of all our literary productions, as even a cursory glance at the shelves of any bookseller on Broadway will readily confirm.
Not long ago (I am composing this in the summer of 1846), no fewer than five of these volumes were sent to me for review. In accordance with convention, each of these books featured an exceedingly sensational title, promising a tale of Extraordinary Hardship!¿Unprecedented Adventure!¿Uncommon Suffering!¿and Remarkable Deliverance! Unsurprisingly, all five proved, upon perusal, to be entirely devoid of aesthetic value. And yet, in spite of their many egregious flaws, each became an immediate commercial success¿a circumstance bound to be a source of the keenest vexation to any true literary artist whose own infinitely superior works have failed to receive the recognition (and remuneration) they deserve.
What was it about these books¿I was left to ponder¿what was it that accounted for their inordinate appeal? The answer, I concluded, resides in a peculiarity of our nature that¿however shameful to confess¿is unquestionably as old as our species itself. I refer, of course, to the innate human appetite for stories involving bloodshed and cruelty. Whatever other thrilling or suspenseful incidents may be found in narratives of Indian captivity, such books depend for the greatest impact on their graphic portrayal of the ghastly horrors of frontier combat¿and, in particular, on the unspeakable tortures to which helpless prisoners are routinely subjected by their savage foes!
Even today, there are images I retain from these books that are impossi
Customer Reviews:
Series Maintains High Style and Adventure.......2005-09-19
Harold Schechter's Edgar Allen Poe mystery series is one of my favorites, and I was pleased to find the third one just as engrossing as its predecessors. The books, written in the first person, freely adopt Poe's literary style--sometimes to comedic effect. Schechter does poke affectionate fun at Poe now and again, but not at the cost of dehumanizing the character. His Poe feels like a warm and admirable (if pretentious and squeamish) human being. Schechter, who is more commonly known as the writer of many above average historical true crime books, handles the adventure adroitly, too. For the full flavor, I would recommend that new readers begin with Nevermore. While the books could be taken out of order (if not without losing some context), Nevermore is powerful at establishing Poe as a character and really shouldn't be missed.
delightfulmid nineteenth century historical mystery.......2004-08-03
In 1845, the Raven and several scathing reviews in newspapers have brought fame to Edgar Allan Poe He relocated to Manhattan accompanied by his fragile spouse and his mother-in-law. However, the city is in an angry uproar as someone is killing and scalping people. The locals believe that Indian Chief Wolf Bear, working in P.T. Barnum's sideshow, is the serial killer and a lynch mob forms.
However, Kit Carson arrives in time to prove that Chief Wolf Bear is innocent and that the reprehensible John "Liver-Eating" Johnson is the killer. Joining ranks Kit and Edgar follow the deadly trail that includes a mysterious albino client of the author. While Edgar would prefer to say NEVERMORE and Kit believes a big city is HUM BUG, both know they must stop this vicious murderer before he adds more to his scalp collection.
The obvious comparison between the writer and the frontiersman is a delight and much of the historical tidbits add a sense of mid nineteenth century New York to the historical mystery. Johnson, who ate the livers of his victims, comes across as macabre and authentic as the real person he was. However, the flashbacks that provide much of the period piece also take away from the suspense building to a final confrontation between the mountain man serial killer vs. the amateur sleuth writer and his western scout partner in the canyons of New York.
Harriet Klausner
Book Description
Suspense, intrigue, atmosphere, and vivid historical detail combine into a thrilling ride through nineteenth-century New York City in The Mask of Red Death. Harold Schechter delivers both a wonderfully accurate portrait of a city in turmoil and an irresistibly appealing depiction of his amateur sleuth Edgar Allan Poe, mirroring the master’s writing style with wit and acumen.
It is the sweltering summer of 1845, and the thriving metropolis has fallen victim to a creature of the most inhuman depravity. Found days apart, two girls have been brutally murdered, their throats slashed, viciously scalped, and–most shocking of all–missing their livers. Edgar Allan Poe, despite what the tenor of his own tales of terror might suggest about his constitution, is just as shaken and revolted by these horrendous crimes as the panic-stricken public. Suspicion of the scalper’s identity immediately swirls around the most famous “redskin” in New York, Chief Wolf Bear, one of the human attractions at P.T. Barnum’s American Museum. Certain that Chief Wolf Bear is innocent, Poe has deduced that the city is concealing a cannibal somewhere in its teeming masses, one with an ever-growing appetite for human prey.
Before he can investigate his theory further, Poe stumbles onto the scene of a third gruesome murder. Poe recently met William Wyatt when he agreed to look at a document for Wyatt to determine the authenticity of the purportedly famous handwriting on it. Now Poe finds Wyatt in a pool of blood, his scalp removed. How, Poe muses, are Wyatt and his document connected to the two slain girls?
As frenzied emotions over the murders reach a fevered pitch, Kit Carson makes an appearance. The famous scout has been tracking the “Liver Eater” since the man killed his wife months ago. Together, Carson and Poe make an odd sleuthing team, but their combined wits are formidable. The trail they uncover reveals a dark secret more powerful than anything they could have imagined– one that may reach the upper echelons of politics and privilege.
From the Hardcover edition.
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- The Good Doctor is Naked, Robert Hardy Barnes, MD
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The Good Doctor Is Naked: Finding the Human Beneath My Mask
MD, Robert Hardy Barnes
Manufacturer: iUniverse, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
Medical | Professionals & Academics | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
Memoirs | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
General | Death & Grief | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
Grief & Bereavement | Death & Grief | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
New Age | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books | Astrology | Chakras | Channeling | Divination | Dreams | General | Goddesses | Meditation | Mental & Spiritual Healing | Mysticism | New Thought | Reference | Reincarnation | Self-Help | Theosophy | Urantia | Visionary Fiction
Personal Transformation | Spirituality | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0595315755 |
Book Description
Don't say a word. Bobby Barnes was ten the day his father shot himself, and the first lesson he learned about it was that he should never tell a soul because people might reject him. From that day forward, he hid his secret behind a series of masks--the mask of the Eagle Scout, the wise doctor, community and church leader--and feared that one day his mask would be torn off and he would be naked amid his humiliation and self-doubt. This is the story of a man who achieved the outward signs of success but yearned for inner peace. It took Bob Barnes many years and an unexpected turn of events to discover himself and realize the true meaning of his life. Read his story, and you will learn that doctors are human; they are susceptible to emotional pain and doubts about their profession. Read his story, and learn something about yourself.
" ... a deeply moving account of someone coming to grips with a painful past." - Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
" ... should prove helpful to many people." - Frederick Buechner
Customer Reviews:
The Good Doctor is Naked, Robert Hardy Barnes, MD.......2004-08-26
What a vital message!
"The Good Doctor is Naked" is Bob Barnes' personal story; but for me this book is so much more. For me, it speaks of what I have come to believe: I believe that if we, as a society, are to save ourselves from the terribly sad and neurotic existence we lead, we must re-define the word success.
Here is a medical doctor who has achieved it all; society would say, "This guy made it... big!" I say that Bob Barnes has "made it...big",too. But I say it for different reasons: I say it because he has dared to be vulnerable, I say it because he has dared to be honest, I say it because he has dared to challenge his own definition of the word "success."
Bob Barnes is saying to me that he could not find personal success until the "Real Bob Barnes" stood up. He is saying to me that his achievements stand; but that he is not the measure of his achievements. He is saying to me that he is the measure of his self knowledge, the measure of his self love, the measure of his honesty, the measure of his empathy and the measure of his service to his fellow man.
What a wonderful definition of success.
Louise Pluymen
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Undying Faces: A Collection of Death Masks
Manufacturer: Kessinger Publishing, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General | Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Death | Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0766166406 |
Book Description
This book is a translation from the German edition of Das Ewige Antlitz. Death masks command our utmost reverence, for the face is symbolic and perpetuates the final impression of a human spirit whom we once knew, or who had made his mark on all men's minds. This work endeavors to assemble and collate material from the widest possible field. As the reader glances through the illustrations, he will at once notice a limitation. There is no mask dating from antiquity and the question of the use of death masks in those ages is not dealt with. The material as such obliged the author to adopt this restriction in order to confine the subject within some bounds. Therefore it only embraces the Christian culture of the West and of that period, only from about 1400 up to the present day.
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Death Mask: A Julian Quist Mystery Novel (A Red badge novel of suspense)
Judson Pentecost Philips
Manufacturer: Dodd Mead
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
United States | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books | 18th Century | 19th Century | 20th Century | African American | Asian American | Classics | Collections & Readers | Drama | General | Hispanic | History & Criticism | Humor | Jewish American | Letters & Correspondence | Native American | Poetry | Short Stories | Women Writers
General | Mystery & Thrillers | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0396078834 |
Average customer rating:
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Bag of Toys: Sex, Scandal, and the Death Mask Murder
David France
Manufacturer: Grand Central Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Alternative | Sex Instruction | Sex | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
Human | Sexuality | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
Criminology | Crime & Criminals | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books | AIDS | Abuse | Adults | Aging | Children | Class | Communities | Culture | Death | General | History | Leisure | Marriage & Family | Medicine | Men | Occupational | Race Relations | Religion | Research & Measurement | Rural | Social Groups | Social Situations | Social Theory | Suburban | Urban | Women
Murder & Mayhem | True Accounts | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
True Crime | True Accounts | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
ASIN: 0446516066 |
Books:
- A Fistful of Happiness
- A Girl Could Stand Up
- A House on Fire: The Rise and Fall of Philadelphia Soul
- Addicted To War: Why The U.s. Can't Kick Militarism
- Against Gravity
- Another Man's Son (MIRA)
- Another World: A Novel
- Argall: The True Story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith
- Back Stab (Francesca Vierling Mysteries)
- Berthe Morisot
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