Product Description
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There is a sacred privacy in the life of a blind person. It is led apart from much of the ordinary work of the world, and is unaffected by many external incidents which help to make up the important events of other lives. It is passed in the shade and not in the open sunlight of eager activity. At first we should be disposed to say that such a life, with its inevitable restrictions and compulsory isolation, could offer little of public interest, and might well remain unchronicled. But in the rare cases where blindness, feeble health, and suffering form scarcely any bar to activity; where they are not only borne with patience, but by heroic effort are compelled to minister to great aims, we are eager to learn the secret of such a life. No details connected with it are devoid of interest; and we are stimulated, encouraged, and strengthened by seeing obstacles overcome which appeared insurmountable, and watching triumph where we dreaded defeat.

Elizabeth Gilbert was born at a time when kindly and intelligent men and women could gravely implore "the Almighty" to "take away" a child merely because it was blind; when they could argue that to teach the blind to read, or to attempt to teach them to work, was to fly in the face of Providence. And her whole life was given to the endeavour to overcome prejudice and superstition; to show that blindness, though a great privation, is not a disqualification. Blind men and women can learn, labour, and fulfil all the duties of life if their fellow-men are merciful and helpful, and God is on the side of all those who work honestly for themselves and others. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A great summary of inner conflicts
While women have gone through SOME changes since this book was published in the early '70s, they (unfortunately) still wrestle with the conflicting expectations that this author describes clearly, insightfully, and succinctly.Every young woman should be made aware of the information in this book at an early age--whether through their own reading or through the caring explanations of parents and teachers. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (13)

Sacred Places for Chaotic times
Karen's book is wonderfully written, lucid, easy to understand, with incredible photos.I have the good fortune to be one of her friends as well. We have known each other about 9 years and I have attended her Isis Navigatums and some of her rituals. We are connected through several Egyptian goddesses -- Isis, Hathor and Sekhmet. Karen has literally lived her 2 books WALKING AN ANCIENT PATH and her first one, SACRED PLACES OF GODDESS, transformed her life through sacred rituals, immersed herself in sacred sites, created personal relationships with goddesses, lives in her own Temple, etc. She walks her talk!! Through her books one can begin (or continue) a path of Right Action, healing oneself, and the planet, and learning about the Goddess. I cannot recommend her books more highly!!

What a great journey!
What a wonderful opportunity to "journey" to the Goddess sites all over the world!Karen's book provides an opportunity for each of us to begin to recognize those immages of the Goddess "hiding in plain site" in our own churches and public buildings.

Excellent book, at a great price, Thanks
This book is fabulous. With lots of historical sites to visit and worship the goddess. I learned of sites within hours of my hometown and plan to make a trip soon. It is uplifting and creates a sense of integrity of the feminine.

Goddess places of empowerment remembered!
A wonderful and thorough look at the abundance of Goddess sites around the globe.This book leaves you wanting to journey and experience the sacred dwellings of the Goddess!Right on time!

Packed with Great Info and Pics
After reading this book, I understand why people hole up in living room recliners with travel books.You feel like you have a friend named Karen leading you by the hand around the world to the Goddess.You actually feel you're inside Hina's Cave in Hawaii, or inside the Temple of Hera on the Island of Samos, or gazing at the Labyrinth in Britain's Glastonbury Tor.This book is dense with fascinating female-deity facts and blocks of solid info backed up by a 12-page bibliography.It's also packed with photos, drawings and maps, too - at least one to every page spread. I'm keeping this book handy as a reference source as well as a source of travel ideas.

~ Jeri Studebaker, author of Switching to Goddess: Humanity's Ticket to the Future
... Read more

Product Description
In the spring of 1983 Terry Tempest Williams learned that her mother was dying of cancer. That same season, The Great Salt Lake began to rise to record heights, threatening the herons, owls, and snowy egrets that Williams, a poet and naturalist, had come to gauge her life by.One event was nature at its most random, the other a by-product of rogue technology: Terry's mother, and Terry herself, had been exposed to the fallout of atomic bomb tests in the 1950s. As it interweaves these narratives of dying and accommodation, Refuge transforms tragedy into a document of renewal and spiritual grace, resulting in a work that has become a classic.


From the Trade Paperback edition.Amazon.com Review
The only constants in nature are change and death. TerryTempest Williams, a naturalist and writer from northern Utah, has seenher share of both. The pages of Refuge resound with the deathsof her mother and grandmother and other women from cancer, the resultof the American government's ongoing nuclear-weapons tests in thenearby Nevada desert. You won't find the episode in the standardhistory textbooks; the Feds wouldn't admit to conducting the testsuntil women and men in Utah, Nevada, and northwestern Arizona took thematter to court in the mid-1980s, and by then thousands of Americanshad fallen victim to official technology. Parallel to her account ofthis devastation, Williams describes changes in bird life at thesanctuaries dotting the shores of the Great Salt Lake as water levelsrose during the unusually wet early 1980s and threatened the nestinggrounds of dozens of species. In this world of shattered eggs anddrowned shorebirds, Williams reckons with the meaning of life,alternating despair and joy. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (46)

The Wanton, Beautiful Face of Being
I read this book long ago, when my wife bought it and read it. It was awhile after my wife had been treated for cancer. She read it and added it to a small bookstand that sits on her nightstand next to her bed. It's where I think she adds favorites she wants nearby to inspire her dreams. It has remained there ever since.

This book excels in interweaving several different narratives: that of a dying mother, the influences of natural phenomenon on life and death, the beauty and ugliness of the world, the wantonness and the care and concern of mankind and its institutions, the nuances of religion for good and for bad. It's a book I should revisit, because its subtle shouting voice and its terrible tender stories are ones that seem kindred to me as a resident of the Great Basin. It somehow captures the serene beauty of the bleak desert and dead sea often found inside of culture and of mankind and in every person. There is an ebb and flow in its pages not unlike the lap of the waves on the silent shore.
Time For All Eternity

Sad, but great nonfiction
Really a heartwarming book. Amazon is probably the cheapest place to find this book. I got it new and kind of wished I would have got it used to save a little cash. Williams is a wonderful environmental writer. It is so interesting how she connects illness with the devastation affecting her beloved Great Salt Lake bird refuge. Being non-religious myself, I thought Williams really educated the reader on mormonism and her beliefs. It was eye-opening to have a writer who is not trying to crame their religion down our throats. I definitely cried multiple times throughout this book. It also sparked an interest in birds for me.

Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams
Never received this item. Seller said she never received the order. Tried to access the cancel function, couldn't make it work.Recontacted the seller, and she contacted Amazon; my account was promptly credited.Not a good start with my first experience with Amazon.

Good read
The book was good, I had to read this for a class and ended up really enjoying it. I would recommend it for anyone wanting to read a new novel.

Outstanding
I couldn't put it down once I started reading.Quality writing.So many things in life, both nature and human, that are beyond our control, but Terry presented the story in such a way that was inspiring and hopeful. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Artic Schoolteacher
This book is a wonderful Alaskan documentary.Since visiting Alaska several times in the past 3 years I found it to be very enjoyable reading.

A moving story!

Abbie and Ed Morgan were adventurous and brave when they traveled to a remote Eskimo village to live among the people and serve them for two years.The actual photographs and details of their adventures are so interesting and transport the reader back to a time very different from today.
You might also enjoy a new release, another book of courage and survival that takes place in early Alaska.
When the Water Runs: Growing Up with Alaska

The best book I've read this year.
I came across Arctic Schoolteacher by accident.I had taken my kids to a summer program at a county library.While we waited for the show to begin, I browsed the shelves and came across this book.I have probably read 20-30 books this year, and Arctic Schoolteacher makes the top of my list.In it, the author tells the story of how she and her husband travelled to a remote Alaskan village in the 1930s as government employees.Abbie taught school, and Ed, her husband, oversaw the reindeer herd.I don't want to give away too much of the story, but the book is filled with the numerous joys and sorrows that Abbie experienced in her two year stay in the Last Frontier.I only wish that Abbie had mentioned more about her life before Alaska, and about how she and Ed met.I am glad that the book included an epilogue by Abbie's daughter that mentions what happened in Abbie's life after Alaska.

Worth Reading
A particularly moving story. This book takes place about the same time as "Tisha" but in the famed Bristol Bay Region in a village called Kulukak. It was published in 1992 and available in paperback, this book should be easy to locate.

It was notabout teaching, but about her life in Kulukak.
I ordered this book because I like reading books about teachers in various parts of the world. This book was not about teaching,but about her life in Kulukak. That part was well written, but depressing. I guess it is what life was like there. Abbie Morgan handled the depressing landscape with humor and love. I was disappointed because it was not what I was looking for, but it does not mean that it is not a good book. If you are looking for a description of 1930 Alaska, then this is your book. Morgan describes life in this town with clarity and handles lifes disappointments with grace. She was an amazing woman to have worked there. ... Read more

Product Description
America and France have always had a special relationship. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the two have enjoyed a love affair of sorts, with all the love/hate dynamics that suggests. From Benjamin Franklin charming Louis XVI to Jackie Kennedy enchanting Charles de Gaulle, the two peoples have fascinated and repelled each other. Mary Blume has cultivated her own love affair with this often inscrutable land -- France.

It is an affair that spans more than thirty years, from the time Mary Blume first came to Paris, beginning her renowned columns in the International Herald Tribune with a fine eye for the charms, and no aversion to skewering the pretensions, of her adopted home. As with the best chronicles of a time and a place, the narrator begins to emerge through the text. Only Mary Blume could have written these essays. Hers is a unique voice that has won her a devoted audience who have turned religiously, over decades, to her weekend features.

Quintessentially American, she has managed that fine trick of not assimilating, and yet coming to know, in the fullest sense, the place and the people in all their often sublime and sometimes ridiculous complexity. In the pieces themselves, whether she turns her penetrating lens on Frenchemen or their money or their socks, whether a bearded lady or Simone de Beauvoir, street performers or members of the Académie Française, whether the newest chic potato or the eternally chic St. Germain de Prés, whether the events of May '68 or the last presidential elections, she sees what would pass unseen -- were she not there to notice it.

In the simplest things, Mary Blume reveals the telling detail. In a piece ostensibly about cooking lessons given by two well-meaning aristocrats, she lays bare the acute French sense of class; in a deadpan explanation of the byzantine process of changing street names, she captures the Kafkaesque French bureaucracy; in looking at one beloved Left Bank bistro, she gives us the essence of every such restaurant; by describing the French art of window shopping, she gives us a reflection of how the French see themselves. Whether plumbing the nuances of their language, their rites, rules, or rituals; whether looking at the Mona Lisa or the political arena, film-makers or winemakers, the places and personalities come alive with an uncanny ring of truth.

Illustrated by Ronald Searle with the unique wit and delicacy for which he is world famous, A French Affair gives us not only a unique perspective on a time, a place, and a people, but a France that we can digest, distill, and revisit without ever leaving the comfort of home.Amazon.com Review
Even the most dedicated expat rarely manages to completely fitinto an adopted foreign culture. It's precisely this quality thatallows American Mary Blume to so thoughtfully observe and recordParis, the city that's served as her home for over three decades,though its ways may still mystify her.In A French Affair--acollection of essays published in the International HeraldTribune--the columnist deftly captures the quirks and changes thatare visible only to those who live in France, though they may be mostinteresting to those who don't.

In these commentaries--ranging fromthe opening of invention conventions to the mire of bureaucracy thataccompanies the naming of a street (which may only be named after deadpeople, preferably deceased for at least 15 years)--Blume unveils theFrench quest for perfection in a world that's perfectly imperfectbecause of French design, and how the logic of Descartes'sdescendents--regarding such points as grammar--is sometimes extreme tothe point of being irrational.She captures trends, from thefashionable la ratte potato to the metric system. She recordsnotable moments---the death of a designer, the opening of a charmschool for men--and notable people, such as Renoir's jet-setting sonand Simone de Beauvoir. Of course, this being a book about France,Blume occasionally delves into food, be it the inner workings of asoup kitchen or the launching of cooking classes taught by royalty.With these witty and insightful short snippets, Blume provides small,crystal-clear windows into true French life--a rare accomplishmentfrom an expatriate or a native. --Melissa Rossi ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

A good book for your lunch break.....
I think A FRENCH AFFAIR will be best appreciated by those who have seen Paris once or twice. Those who have no familiarity with Paris and it's residents may become lost. If you know the difference between Simone de Beauvoir and Simone Signoret you may find the book entertaining.

If I had not known Mary Blume wrote her Paris beat pieces for the International Herald Tribune, I would have thought they were written for The New Yorker magazine.She wrote tongue-in-cheek stories that begin in the middle and assume the reader already knows a great deal about Paris life. If she pops up in London you don't blink an eyelash because you know it's a day trip to travel from London to Paris, or Paris to anywhere else for that matter since Paris has made itself the travel hub of Europe.

I read these articles over lunch--spread over a few months. I carried the book in my book bag and broke it out when I needed a little light reading.This is a perfect book for travel because if you put it away and don't look at it for a month you won't loose your train of thought.If you read it straight through it may be as disappointing as reading a week of newspapers.

Disappointing
I have visited France frequently, and am an avid reader of books about France.I loved the title and cover photo on this book, and had great hopes for the book since the writer had reported from Paris for The International Herald Tribune for many years.While the book is well written, I felt that many of the essays failed to connect with the French spirit and joie de vivre.I found some of the writing to be dry and the book slow.Each story was originally an article in the paper, and while they might have worked reading them with the morning coffee, they did not work for me as a collection.

The book title would lead you to believe that the book is about France, some of the stories take place in other countries and I could not figure out how they ended up in the book. Additionally the last section of the book focuses on a group of European filmmakers that would have worked well as a Filmography, but for my money did not belong in a book of this title.

Don't get me wrong, there are some interesting and well-written pieces in this book, but you have to trundle through pages that I feel are slow and dated to get to them.If you have not read much about France, I recommend Adam Gopnick's "Paris to The Moon," John Littell's "French Impressions," or for a humorous perspective any of Peter Mayle's "Provence" works.Of course, don't miss the grandfather of all books on France, Hemmingway's "A Moveable Feast."

Great book if you're into Paris!
Having lived and worked as an American in Paris for 7 years in the late 80's and early 90's, I really appreciated Ms. Blume's commentaries on the French and evocations of the details of Parisian life that made it so wonderful.She captures the sheer fun of observing and participating in a foreign culture better than any writer on the subject I've read to date.Her empathy for the French despite their quirks - naturally, only quirks when seen by an American - resonates well with my experience.Highly recommended!

Fun, smart, accessible...
Phew...Let me defend this book a little against a couple of odd criticisms.First, this is a collection of essays written over quite a fewyears.As such, it is not meant to be cohesive in the way a single bookabout the French might be.That said, it all hangs together quite well andis organized in an intelligent and useful way.It also seems a little oddto make a distinction between a book about "the French" and abook about the French which includes material about French filmmakers,writers, etc.I would think any book about the culture would be incompletewithout fairly extensive sections on the arts.The arts are prettyinextricably linked with outsiders perception of the French and, to a largedegree, their own perceptions about themselves.The people she talks aboutare hardly obscure or only of interest to "old people" --- Duras,Simone de Beauvoir, Truffaut, Doisneau for god's sake, whose photos adornthe walls of a hefty percentage of college kids to this day.Duras is aparticularly amusing choice for such a book, as she seems morestereotypically "French" than perhaps anyone else in the wholecountry.Should the reader not know who any of these people are, theessays are written for a wide audience and do not assume knowledge of thesubjects.And the style is certainly not coldly intellectual; the writingis intelligent, but quite breezy and very enjoyable.

Almost good...
As a 50 year old with a newly found love of Paris and, as a result, a desire to learn French, I bought "A French Affair" because it was recommended as shedding light on what makes the French act, uh, French.Ifthis is the point of the book, then it only partially achieves the goal. Agreat deal of the book, however, is given to anecdotes about French filmmakers.Very nice if that's what you're interested in.If your interestsare similar to mine, understanding the French, I'd come back to this booklater. That being said, some of the articles were very good indeed. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Reviewer's Bookwatch, published by Midwest Book Review on May 1, 2010. The length of the article is 1073 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Bethany's Bookshelf.(Book review)
Author: Susan Bethany
Publication: Reviewer's Bookwatch (Newsletter)
Date: May 1, 2010
Publisher: Midwest Book Review
Page: NA

Article Type: Book review

Distributed by Gale, a part of Cengage Learning ... Read more

Product Description
Following an Australian government edict in 1931, black aboriginal children and children of mixed marriages were gathered up and taken to settlements to be institutionally assimilated. In Rabbit-Proof Fence, award-wining author Doris Pilkington traces the story of her mother, Molly, one of three young girls uprooted from their community in Southwestern Australia and taken to the Moore River Native Settlement. There, Molly and her relatives Gracie and Daisy were forbidden to speak their native language, forced to abandon their heritage, and taught to be culturally white. After regular stays in solitary confinement, the three girls planned and executed a daring escape from the grim camp. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (27)

Rabbit-Proof Fence
YES!This film's spirit and soul interested me and captured my own soul so much that I used it in my Sociology classes for a "culture" learning experience!!!!!!

needs more
The story is amazing.The writing however is ok.There are many things that need an explanation that aren't given one.If the book were two or three times as long it would be perfect.

RUN, GIRLS, RUN...
I first saw the Miramax movie starring Kenneth Branagh, which was based upon this book. I was intrigued enough by the film to read this book. I was not disappointed. This book is certainly a testament to the human spirit. It also reveals the harsh, paternalistic and racist policies that the Australian government imposed upon its Aboriginal population.

In 1931, the Australian government issued an edict that mandated that all Aboriginal and part Aboriginal children were to be forcibly removed from their homes and taken to special settlements where they were to be assimilated. There, while living in inhumane and degrading conditions, they would be taught to be culturally white, would be mandated to speak English only, and would be trained to be domestic help or laborers in white households.

The author tells the reader the story of three young girls, Mollie, Gracie, and Daisy, who had Aboriginal mothers and White fathers. Ranging in age from nine to fifteen years old, the three girls were forcibly removed from their loving families and taken to a special settlement. The girls rebelled against this system, and, homesick, escaped from such a settlement.They left with iterally just the clothes on their back. Their only guide home would be a rabbit-proof fence that stretched for over a thousand miles across Australia.

The girls Aboriginal heritage and survival skills would come in handy throughout their nearly nine week long trek across Australia, as they were forced to subsist on the land and the occasional kindness from strangers. They had to endure thirst, hunger, and danger, while avoiding being caught along the way by professional trackers, police on the lookout for them, and white settlers that were unsympathetic to their situation.

This story is a most personal one for the author, as one of the girls, Molly, is the author's mother. Told in a straightforward, factual manner, it is an incredible story that is an indictment of the Australian government's racist policies against its Aboriginal people and its imperialistic self-proclaimed superiority over them.

Quick service
The company who sent me "Rabbit Proof Fence" was thorough and quick within my quidelines.The price was
reasonable and the book all it promised to be.

Rabbit proof fence
this is a great book.should be read by everybody.it's a nice reminder that we have lots of work to do.

True story and it has been around for a while even made into a movie
Read the book ... Read more