"Symbolic Essence" and Other Writings on Modern Architecture and American Culture

Book Description

Historian and architectural critic William H. Jordy (1917–1997) significantly shaped the way we understand the character and meaning of modern architecture and American culture. This collection of his thought-provoking essays encompasses Jordy’s entire career and includes his signature essay, “The Symbolic Essence of Modern Architecture of the Twenties and Its Continuing Influence.” The collection also contains critical writings on works by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn, and Robert Venturi as well as significant but less-well-known pieces and one previously unpublished text.Generously illustrated, the book demonstrates the range and depth of Jordy’s thinking. He leads his readers to discover important connections of architecture with art, literature, intellectual history, symbolic structures, social purpose, and community. Mardges Bacon’s insightful introduction to the volume situates Jordy’s essays in historical and architectural context and offers a concise intellectual biography of this original and influential thinker.

Spacious perspectives.(Symbolic Essence and Other Writings on Modern Architecture and American Culture)(Book Review) : An article from: New Criterion

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Spacious perspectives.(Symbolic Essence and Other Writings on Modern Architecture and American Culture)(Book Review) : An article from: New Criterion
Michael J. Lewis
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from New Criterion, published by Thomson Gale on November 1, 2005. The length of the article is 1841 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Spacious perspectives.(Symbolic Essence and Other Writings on Modern Architecture and American Culture)(Book Review)
Author: Michael J. Lewis
Publication: New Criterion (Magazine/Journal)
Date: November 1, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 24 Issue: 3 Page: 68(4)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Symbolic Essence" and Other Writings on Modern Architecture and American Culture

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Symbolic Essence" and Other Writings on Modern Architecture and American Culture
Mardges Bacon William H. Jordy
Manufacturer: NY
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000MUH4IE

Book Description

Artists have always been drawn to the sea as it offers unparalleled opportunity. One can spend a lifetime not only enjoying the subject, but also trying to understand how to paint it. The colors that we perceive are derived from the lighting, shadows and whatever lies beneath the surface. Compounding the situation is the ever changing, ever moving nature of water. If we follow a few basic rules, which will apply in general to the nature of water, we will avoid mistakes and learn by observation.

In this fully illustrated pocket size book we cover all types of water, still, rivers, coastal, rushing, breaking waves, reflections, morning, sunsets. From the sea to a river or a puddle, mix the colors you need to depict water in all its moods, quickly and accurately.

In order to obtain the most from this and other titles in the 'Color Notes' series, it is strongly recommended that it should be used in conjunction with the Color Mixing Swatch book, an instant guide to 2,460 mixed hues from only 12 colors

Customer Reviews:

Excellent reference for painting water.......2004-05-26

Another in the series by Michael Wilcox, et al that is an excellent reference and guide for the artist on painting and depicting water. The illustrations are excellent and the color mixing suggestions wonderful. This book has been an excellent guide to painting water and learning about mixing and using colors. This book shows you how to make over 2000+ color mixes only using 12 different colors.

Book Description

From mountain to prairie, from boreal forest to unglaciated plateau, Alberta's landscape is rich and diverse. Enthusiasts from across the country and around the world recognize this province for the abundance of wildlife viewing opportunities it offers. Each year, thousands of Alberta's residents and visitors make wildlife viewing and photography a central part of their leisure activities. This comprehensive guide to more than sixty of Alberta's finest wildlife viewing sites includes: mammals, birds, amphibians, fish, reptiles, trees, shrubs, wildflowers: what to look for, where; seasonal indicators for fifty widely sought species; tips on successful wildlife photography; Banff-Jasper and Edmonton-Calgary viewing road logs; full colour maps and photos; and details on facilities and programs.

Customer Reviews:

Wildlife Viewing Guide is WEAK.......2007-09-09

Was not as good as I expected. We didn't use the book very much on our three week trip in Alberta.

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Population and the world economy in the 21st century

Manufacturer: B. Blackwell
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0631129642

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Population and the World Economy in the 21st Century
No Author
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OTFXOU

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Chuck Collins is wrong

hoped for more

The Book That Keeps on Giving

This is no fairy tale! Buy the book!

The best book I've read this year!

Robin Hood Was Right: A Guide to Giving Your Money for Social Change
Chuck Collins , Pam Rogers , and Joan P. Garner
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Nonprofit Organizations & Charities | Industries & Professions | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
General | Personal Finance | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Social Services & Welfare | Poverty | Current Events | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Philanthropy & Charity | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
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Inspired Philanthropy: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Giving Plan, 2nd Edition

ASIN: 0393320855

Amazon.com

Veteran activists Chuck Collins and Pam Rogers show that charity dollars can make a huge difference if they are used for lasting social change. In Robin Hood Was Right, Collins and Rogers question the results of decades of traditional philanthropy. They write, "We give to help the poor, but poverty prevails. We contribute to save the environment, but corporate destruction of our land and waters continues. We donate to shelters, but millions remain homeless." The two call for new ways of giving, ones that "close the divide between rich and poor." That means giving to an emerging group of "social change foundations" that tackle the root causes of poverty and other injustices by working to increase affordable housing and raise the minimum wage.

Robin Hood Was Right is a practical guide to donating for change. It features profiles of foundations, a worksheet to figure out how much you can afford to give, a list of resources for the socially responsible investor, and even a section on how to set up a family charitable foundation if you have more than $1 million to donate. The book also includes cartoons and notable quotes about giving, such as this saying from oil baron J. Paul Getty: "Money is like manure: It's only good if it's spread around." This is a wonderful book for people considering donating in order to right social and economic injustice, whether they can give hundreds or millions of dollars a year. --Dan Ring

Book Description

Last year, Americans donated $150 billion to charity. Giving has never been more popular, possible--or, for many, more confusing. There are oceans of need, mountains of requests, and often little time for the consideration needed to give thoughtfully and effectively. "Change, not charity!" is this book's enthusiastic theme. Long-time activists and givers, authors Chuck Collins and Pam Rogers show that traditional charity most often reinforces the status quo and maintains the dynamics of dependency and control. The progressive ethic of giving endorsed in this book, on the other hand, offers detailed ways to address the root causes of societal problems. With numerous organizational listings and hundreds of helpful suggestions, Robin Hood Was Right is a fun, user-friendly guide for the socially conscious giver, whether one is able to give annually $500 or $5,000,000.

Customer Reviews:

Chuck Collins is wrong.......2002-11-13

The story of Robin Hood is not one of stealing from the rich to give to the poor. It is a story of too much taxes and Robin Hood returning the taxes to those that were bled dry. Not only does Collins rely on an incorrect myth of Robin Hood, but he latches on to myths about solutions for poverty. Studies have shown that minimum wage does not help the poor. In fact, one study (whose author would agree with Collin's premise) called minimum wage "perverse" in the fact that it took from one group of poor (those that became unemployed because of minimum wage) and gave to another group of poor (those that got a small raise because of minimum wage).

A better book on effective ways of helping the poor can be found in some of the chapters of "Healing Our World" by Dr. Mary J. Ruwart.

hoped for more.......2001-01-09

Good intentioned book on the importance of giving money for social change. But the book left me short by not addressing the authors' own observation that "uncertainty about the impact of your gifts" can cause the most philanthropic among us to balk at giving. Book would have been so much more helpful if the authors had spent more time on how a reader can intelligently evaluate the foundations they profile in the book. We get a glimpse of what the book could have been in appendix H where the authors tell us that nonprofits with budgets of more than $250,000 have to have annual audits that are made publicly available. That's the kind of information that's really helpful...and a few words or paragraphs or even a chapter on how to read these audit statements to make sense of the health and intentions of the organizations would have been terrific.

The Book That Keeps on Giving.......2000-04-05

"Robin Hood Was Right" is an entertaining and intelligent guide to contributing to social change. Instead of replying to the nightly phone solicitations or the direct mail appeals, the reader can take control of the contribution process to focus on the values and outcomes desired.

I especially enjoyed the cartoons and sidebars. The text is thoughtful and each appendix offers an array of legitimate organizations. I recommend this book to anyone, who like me, wants to be sure that giving will make a difference. That the book is also a good read is just a free bonus.

This is no fairy tale! Buy the book!.......2000-03-23

Anyone concerned with social change and economic justice should run, not walk to the nearest neighborhood bookstore and grab a copy of Robin Hood Was Right. It is a highly readable, wonderfully informative, essential guide to gaining a deeper understanding of how money affects all our lives, and the practical steps we can take to avoid the pitfalls of the unexamined life. Regardless of your class or wealth status, this book will change the way you view your role in the world in relation to money and the power it provides and witholds.

The best book I've read this year!.......2000-03-21

If you ever wonder if you can make a difference, this book will clear up any doubts. Collins, Rogers and Garner make it crystal clear that anyone who cares about curing society's ills can make a significant difference by giving what they can for social change. Packed with resources, examples, and how-to charts and guides, Robin Hood Was Right charts a clear path from wondering if you can make a difference to improving things from your neighborhood to countries on the other side of the globe. In a time where "donor fatigue" is cited as the reason why people grow increasingly indifferent to social injustice, less and less concerned with the state of the environment, and more hard-hearted about the homeless, Robin Hood has the cure to what ails you -- and our world.

Robin Hood Was Right: A Guide to Giving Your Money for Social Change

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Robin Hood Was Right: A Guide to Giving Your Money for Social Change
Chuck Collins
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000UY863E

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ROBIN HOOD WAS RIGHT: A GUIDE TO GIVING YOUR MONEY FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Co. New York, NY
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000IB9ZYS

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Robin Hood Was Right: A Guide to Giving Your Money for Social Change

Manufacturer: Bookpeople
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 068560084X

Book Description

After the death of her teenage son Ben, author Trudy Carlson compares his difficulty with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder) with her own struggle with dyslexia. The difference between success in overcoming their disabilities is explored in terms of the nature of the two problems and the way each affects the life of the individual. Generic low-cost/no-cost programs helpful for a wide range of difficulties faced by today's elementary school-aged children are described. The correlation between ADHD, anxiety disorders, and suicide is discussed.

Customer Reviews:

Common Sense Spoken Here........2000-03-15

The very first sentence of this will grab and pull you in: "Young people with learning disabilities sometimes commit suicide."

I thought this would be a book about learning disabilities like attention deficit disorder and dyslexia, and it is. What I didn't know or understand are the far-reaching consequences of undiagnosed and mis- or unmanaged symptoms! Although frustrating for the sufferer, learning disabilities can do more than keep them back a grade. However, treatment and low-cost (and some no-cost!) methods are available and outlined in this plain-speaking, easily understood guide. Trudy Carlson knows her topic. Not only has she taught university classes in child developmental psychology (which I thought would make her difficult to understand) but she also lived with dyslexia and attention deficit/hyperactive disorder, so she speaks from experience. Clearly written, well-thought out and practical, I'd recommend this book especially to grade school teachers, but others will benefit as well. Very helpful; very informative. Well done!

Amazon.com

This compendium of military mishaps shows how poor decision-making often leads to catastrophe. In a series of short chapters ideal for subway rides and waiting rooms, Michael Coffey shows how even relatively small misjudgments have become historical turning points. Many of his topics are familiar, such as how the Treaty of Versailles ending the First World War laid the groundwork for an even larger conflict 20 years later. Hitler's military miscalculations--thinking the British would negotiate a peace after Dunkirk, invading Russia, declaring war on the United States--receive prominent attention. Allied leaders also committed plenty of blunders, such as the collapse of British defenses in Singapore and Malaysia, the fruitless bombing of Monte Cassino in Italy, and premature attempts to liberate Arnhem (the subject of the film A Bridge Too Far). More recent events receive coverage, too, including the Bay of Pigs, the disastrous mission in 1980 to free American prisoners in Iran, and Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Some sections are much stronger than others, and readers already familiar with certain wars probably won't learn much from their coverage. Yet Coffey calls attention to an important consideration: mistakes are endemic in war, and victory often goes not to leaders who execute brilliantly planned maneuvers but those who simply avoid error. --John J. Miller

Book Description

A fascinating look behind more than fifty of the most historic military blunders of our century. Lively and engaging, in-depth and informative, this companion to an upcoming series on the History Channel goes beyond mere footage to delve into the facts of some well-remembered but little understood incidents and accidents of modern military history.

Customer Reviews:

Military Stupidity.......2007-05-13

They say that the side in a war that makes the fewest mistakes wins!
This certainly illustrates this in a most succinct manner!

Idiotic Infamy.......2004-08-07

This is one of the worst books I've ever read on military history. You have to wonder how someone can get a book like this published. The author is a journalist, but even that is usually not a disqualifying factor with a book on military history, or any sort of history for that matter. Journalists, after all, deal in fact also.

In this case, however, the book is filled with factual errors, and you get the idea that the author sometimes missed the point of a battle or campaign that he was recounting to you. Given that he's so often mistaken about what happened, it's not much of a surprise that his interpretations are going to be poor also.

All of this leads to my final conclusion. I would avoid this book at all costs. I don't get rid of any book that's non-fiction, usually, but this one's going to the used bookstore. I expect them to reject it, and I'll probably wind up giving it to the library, who will overprice it in their book sale at $1.00.

Decidedly Underwhelming.......2003-04-04

This book was prepared as a companion to a History Channel series and it has the depth and detail one would expect from a television program. As some of the other reviewers have noted, there are sporadic factual mistakes, but the greater shortcoming, to my mind, is the lack of much to say. The factual issues discussed are pretty much common knowledge to anyone having much familiarity at all with military history (or history in general) in the Twentieth Century. Worse yet, the insights and commentary provided are little more than unimaginitive "conventional wisdom." I had some suspicions about this book being of a mass market paperback quality, but I picked it up because it was one of the first in .mp3 audio format. This proved to be a mistake as my first concerns were conclusively proven correct.

The Biggest blunder on military history in the 20th Century.......2000-10-18

This book is amazing in its number of errors, shallowness of analysis, and conceptual ignorance. Even for the most significant battles of World War II, the author gets numerous facts wrong. For example, in discussing the Pacific war, he notes the Japanese had 2 carriers sunk in the Battle of the Coral Sea (they lost 1 small one) and 3 at Midway (4 were sunk). He states that German blundered by not launching an amphibious invasion of England, even though the Germans lost the war in the air(most military historians would regard launching an amphibious invasion without having air supremacy against a country with naval supremacy suicide). He blames the German Air Force for the fact that German industry didn't go into a war footing until 1943. Huh? Blaming an armed service for flawed industrial policies? This is the most error filled history book I've ever seen and ranks top among the biggest blunders on military history in the 20th century. Considering the high quality of the History Channel, it's amazing that they would associate themselves with such a book of errors.

Skip this book.......2000-07-04

As other reviewers have said, it's shallow, riddled with errors, and ultimately unsatisfying. Yet it mentions a lot of incidents, some of which I'd never heard of, like the Queen Mary colliding with her escort. This book's salvation would be a good bibiography, so the interested reader could follow up -- but there is none. No notes. Nothing. For a good book of this sort, read "From the Jaws of Victory", by Charles Fair.

Book Description

Boy Meets Bird.
Boy Gets Bird.
Boy Loses Bird
An Urban Folktale.

One day in the dead of winter, New York Times restaurant critic William Grimes looked out the window into his backyard in Queens and saw a chicken, jet black with a crimson comb. Wherever it had come from, it showed no sign of leaving, and it quickly made a place for itself among the society of resident stray cats. Before long, the chicken became the Chicken, and it began to arouse not only Grimes's protective impulses but also his curiosity. He discovered that chickens were domesticated first as fighters, not food; that egg-laying is triggered by exposure to light; that chickens were a fashion statement in Victorian days. He began to probe the mysteries of gallinaceous behavior, learning to distinguish a dust bath from a death dance and how to cater to his guest's eclectic palate. And when the Chicken began to repay his hospitality with five or six custom-laid eggs per week, Grimes had an answer to the age-old conundrum of which came first: the Chicken.

And then one day, obeying some bird-brained logic of its own -- or perhaps the victim of fowl play -- the Chicken vanished, leaving Grimes eggless but with this funny, enlightening, and heartwarming tale to tell.

Customer Reviews:

A Friend Like No Other.......2006-01-07

My Fine Feathered Friend
By William Grimes
North Point Press 2002
$15 USA, $24.95 Canada
85 pages, illustrations
ISBN: 0-86547-632-2

Reviewed by Karen Davis, PhD, President of United Poultry Concerns

"I looked at the Chicken endlessly, and I wondered. What lay behind the veil of animal secrecy?"

My Fine Feathered Friend is a bittersweet tale that leaves you aching after you put the book away. In part this is because the main character, a large handsome black hen who appears mysteriously one winter day in the writer's yard in Queens, disappears as mysteriously as she arrived. This is a true story. The author, William Grimes, a restaurant critic for The New York Times, is intrigued, fascinated, and finally haunted, by this hen. He perceives her as a kind of Earth Goddess, as solid as a tree trunk, rugged, compact, able and enduring, yet elusive, vulnerable, and, ultimately, as ephemeral as a fairy princess. She vanishes when he comes to love her. He calls the hen, simply and archetypally, the Chicken.

When I first started reading My Feathered Friend, I was put off by the tone. Grimes refers to the hen for a number of pages as "it," while referring to his and his wife's cats as "hes" and "shes." His style is pat with similes and cultivated assurance. I thought, okay, Grimes wants to make sure that no one, including himself, gets emotionally involved with this chicken. He's keeping the lines drawn. But I was wrong. The story reflects his growing tenderness for the Chicken, moving through levity and wonderment to love, sorrow and loss.

The Chicken has an aura of the "familiar" in folklore, an enigmatic being regarded as both a homely acquaintance and a supernatural spirit embodied in an animal that links that animal to a particular person while retaining an inviolable otherness. Grimes's Chicken is like a visitor from another planet (exotic and ineffable) who probably escaped from the local poultry market in Queens (squalid and local). She is a hero and a survivor -- "a brave little refugee"-- who flouts false stereotypes about chickens. "I'd look out back and see a cat chasing the Chicken across the yard," Grimes writes. "Ten minutes later I'd see the Chicken chasing a cat." She is at once endearingly personal and profoundly impersonal. She has her own projects. She is self-possessed. She projects an arch authority, like the author himself. She dominates Grimes's yard, his cats, and his consciousness. She is, he confesses protectively, "a hard read."

The Chicken tracks through the universe by way of a residential patch of earth -- a "pocket paradise" reclaimed from a "wasteland of weeds" in New York City. She captures the eye of a beholder who becomes a Witness driven to Inscribe Her Being. Grimes attempts to fit what he "knows" about chickens (he eats them and makes his living writing about them as food; otherwise he says "the humble chicken was foreign to me") with his deepening perception of, identification with, and ultimate yearning and mourning over this particular hen. She moves him. He is affected by her "air of mystery," her "appetite for play," her "brilliant evasive maneuvers," her "genuine courage," her "character," her "willful high-spirit," her evocation of what the poet William Wordsworth inestimably versed as "something ever more about to be."

Grimes reads up on chickens, passing on to us pieces of information (some accurate, some not) about Gallus domesticus in folklore, history, and poultry manuals, as a backdrop to, an explanation of, the Chicken, a creature so definite, and infinite, so solid and numinous, she eludes classification. He muses:

"Was it pure coincidence that she liked to sneak up on Yowzer, the cat most likely to develop a nervous twitch when caught unawares? Time after time I saw the Chicken trot up delicately when Yowzer had his back turned, squawk a couple of times, and then watch as the cat leaped a couple of vertical feet. The Chicken, after a successful ambush, would run off jauntily, with a cackle that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle."

At other times, "I'd see Bruiser and Crusher snoozing in the basket, Yowzer draped along a nearby wooden bench, and the dark, shapeless form of Midnight filling out the sagging seat of an old sea grass chair we had bought for a couple of dollars at a yard sale. And in the midst of the group, perfectly content, sat the Chicken. It was a heartwarming sight."

One night a police helicopter hovers over the yard, causing the pine tree in which the Chicken is roosting to sway violently under a wind of hurricane force. "Somewhere, deep in the branches," Grimes writes, "the Chicken was holding on for dear life. I couldn't begin to imagine what was going through her tiny mind. By now, I figured, she had either suffered a fatal heart attack or had been dashed to the ground. But no. The next morning, amid wreckage out of Apocalypse Now, the Chicken reappeared, brimful of vim and vigor."

But one spring day, the Chicken is gone. She does not return. Grimes and his wife Nancy look everywhere. They wrack their brains trying to remember if there were any behavioral signs they failed to notice. "The previous afternoon I had watched her resting comfortably in her nest beneath the pine tree," Grimes writes. "I searched for signs of violence but did not find any. The only trace of the Chicken was a single black feather near the back door. The Chicken was definitely, profoundly missing."

It is hard reading the final pages of this book. The depression Grimes describes is not roguish but real, though he tries to make light. "We had grown to love the Chicken," he says. We believe him: so had we. "She really was a big presence in the backyard," Nancy sighs. You go back to the book cover and study the jet black sweet bird face with its rosy comb and pert expression, framed in an oval mirror. If you know chickens, you know the look of that bright round eye, so attentive yet pensive.

My Feathered Friend is like an exquisite blade sliced across your bowels in the midst of a light-hearted romp that won't heal. The book ends with unappeased longing and unsettled questions (unhappy questions on many levels), not "closure," nor should it. Though Grimes says the story is "at an end, at least for us," still, he wonders and hopes, maybe the Chicken will come back. Maybe she's on a journey. He bought things for her. He and Nancy wait for her. They keep a light in the window. Maybe he'll wake up one morning, look out the window, and see "a large feathered form bustling around the patio, scattering cat food and clucking."

But for now, as Alice Walker said about a horse named Blue, in her excruciating essay, "Am I Blue,"* let us not let the animals whom we piercingly perceive become for us merely "images" of what they once so beautifully expressed and are. The Chicken is every chicken. One like no other. Take the next step.

*In Living By the Word: Selected Writings 1973-1987. This book of Walker's essays also includes "Why Did the Balinese Chicken Cross the Road?" ("[T]o try to get both of us to the other side.")
_________________________________________________________________
Karen Davis, PhD, is the founder and President of United Poultry Concerns, a nonprofit organization that promotes the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl (www.upc-online.org). She is the author of Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs: An Inside Look at the Modern Poultry Industry; A Home for Henny; Instead of Chicken, Instead of Turkey: A Poultryless "Poultry" Potpourri"; More Than a Meal: The Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual, and Reality (Lantern Books, 2001); and The Holocaust and the Henmaid's Tale: A Case for Comparing Atrocities (Lantern Books, 2005).

A mysterious arrival and departure, a story of friends........2005-06-27

A poignantly told memoir of a season spent in the company of a somewhat bohemian chicken. I gave a copy of this book to my vet after we tried for several months to save the life of one of my pet chickens. She hadn't much experience with chickens, more so with the fanicier hookbills often found in one's the parlor, so I wanted her to know what it was like to know a chicken on a more personal level. The author accomplishes this very well, sharing valuable chicken lore with his affectionate and often respectful look at the life of a chicken and life from The Chicken's point of view.

A very quick and light-hearted read.......2003-03-04

I ran across this book at the library looking for substantive books on chickens--the cute cover caught my eye. This is a very entertaining and enjoyable read!

I'd recommend this book as one you'll finish quickly, share with a friend or two, and want to read again yourself one day.

Great gift book.......2003-02-16

This extremely short book really qualifies as more essay than "book," and as much as I enjoyed it, I wondered who would shell out hard-earned cash for its slim contents.

Then I found myself handing it around to people as I would share a cartoon or funny email. "Zip through it over lunch," I said, "Take it instead of a magazine while you're waiting for your oil change or dentist appointment."

And so I learned what this book is best for: for a few bucks, you can pass a smile around to your friends. The eye-catching cover is hard for anyone to resist, and the illustrations are great. If you know someone who's been adopted by a stray animal, this is perfect for them. But if not, pass it on anyway. It's a light, funny read that will make anyone smile.

In Grime's hands this unusual bird manages a truly universal appeal. I loved the pleasure it seemed to take in sneaking up behind a skittish cat and sending the cat vertically airborne with a sudden cackle. Then there's the pet store employee who tries to explain that they don't carry chicken feed, because a chicken is not a "particular animal." Grimes has an eye and ear for gem moments like these.

One heck of a chicken...........2003-02-03

This is an absolutely adorable story about a man who comes to know and love a chicken who suddenly appeared in his backyard. I first read the authors article about the enigmatic and willful chicken in the New York Times and I actually saved that article because I enjoyed it so thoroughly. My Fine Feathered Friend is just as charming as that article was and better since the author is able to elaborate more on the chicken's fantastic personality and the personalities of the numerous cats that interact with the tenacious bird. The author really knows how to describe animals and the cats encounters with the chicken are truly vivid and terribly amusing. You will not forget this chicken. Its personality lingers long after the final page. The book is a joy and I highly recommend it. Thank you, Mr. Grimes, for sharing such a delightful story!

The Fine Feathered Friend of My Very Best Friends

Average customer rating:

The Fine Feathered Friend of My Very Best Friends
Brenard Bonhomme and Nicole Claveloux
Manufacturer: Harlin Quist
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000IFOFUI

Average customer rating:

M. DeLaine's Review of Marullo's First Release

My Fine Feathered (and Furry) Friends
Marianne Marullo
Manufacturer: PublishAmerica
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Comic | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Humor | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 141378660X

Book Description

Welcome to "Birdland!" We think you'll enjoy this collage of true, humorous, and sometimes heartwarming stories about the birds, chipmunks, and a surprising groundhog named "Gus." It's amazing how many friends you can make with just a little food, love, and concern. As Marianne says, "You learn to expect the unexpected with birds and animals. They have personalities just like we do and when you get to know them, they endear themselves to you." This light reading is just what the doctor ordered in a world that's full of stress. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the view.

Customer Reviews:

M. DeLaine's Review of Marullo's First Release.......2005-10-23

Ms. Marullo's book is a delightful read. Her adventures with her new-found friends moves along well and engenders many smiles at the humorous antics of birds and animals she encounters. Marianne's writing is at once endearing and entertaining and will immediately appeal to children, as it has already to adults. Parents may safely consider this book for quality bed time with their young ones, as it will gently nurture fertile little imaginations and foster closer bonds as parents answer the curiously sweet questions only children may ask.

Critter-watching becomes great fun through Marianne's writing--for example, the story of Gussy/Gussie the groundhog is simply darling. Hopefully, everyone reading this book will stop and observe the excitement that is happening all around us. The peace of the natural world is just an eye away.

Ms. Marullo's book will be a treat for you and a warm gift to friends.

Average customer rating:

The Fine Feathered Friend of My Very Best Friends
Bernard & Nicole Claveloux Bonhomme
Manufacturer: Belgium: Harlin Quist, Inc. 1971
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000Q3WCUW

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