Product Description
Thomas Moran`s paintings of the American West secured his place as one of the most important landscape painters of the late nineteenth century. This lavishly illustrated book-a survey of Moran`s work throughout his career-presents nearly one hundred of his works, reproduced in color, along with essays by leading authorities that explore his virtuosity in various fields.Amazon.com Review
Thomas Moran hiked through the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone in1871, when most folks back East thought that stories ofhundred-foot-high geysers, thousand-foot-deep canyons, and such wereprobably hogwash. After he submitted his glorious paintings of cliffs,rapids, and sun-struck vistas, Americans were finally persuaded thatthe West was as real as it was wild.It is largely because of Moran'sglowing, oil-painted testimony that a formerly skeptical U.S. Congresssoon preserved those spectacular lands.This book is the catalog ofthe 1998 retrospective of Moran's work, which opened on the 125thanniversary of the dedication of Yellowstone National Park. Anderson'sessays cover every phase of Moran's life and career, from his work asan illustrator and printmaker to his success as one of the gentlemanpainters of New York City. It contains scores of archival photographsof the rather theatrical Moran as he aged, with his ever-lengthening,ever-whitening chin whiskers, and such treasures as a long letter hewrote from Yellowstone to his beautiful wife, Mary, in which heblithely describes rattlesnakes, tarantulas, and wolves observed atclose range. The letter is signed "Your loving Hub." Along with AlbertBierstadt, Frederick Church, John Frederick Kensett, and other19th-century landscape painters, viewers often associate Moran withwhat he called "a wonderful age," the optimistic years between theCivil War and the Great War. This book contains plates of everyquintessentially American scene he painted--the pulsing sunset overthe pristine wilderness, the windswept mountain pass, the misty,rushing stream. A scholarly book, it nonetheless captures much of thewonder Moran and his peers felt for the vast Western landscape and theglowing future it represented. --Peggy Moorman ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

amazing
this book is chalk full of amazing images and beautiful reproductions. Filled with paintings in both oil and watercolor this book is a must buy for aspiring landscape painters. this book reveals Moran's intimate knowledge of the landscape and his intricate and very sophisticated use of numerous mediums. If you enjoy the hudson valley painters , there is no doubt that this book should grace the shelves of your studio or library.

Great Historical Resource, Underwhelming Art Book
As a resource on Thomas Moran, this book, published for the exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., is invaluable. It contains four biographical essays by Nancy K. Anderson, associate curator at the National Gallery, that do an excellent job of fleshing out Moran and his life. The appendices further enlighten the reader on Moran and his time in the west, including a first hand account from the 1873 Grand Canyon expedition. As a biographical reference on Thomas Moran, there is no better resource.

But, as an art book of Thomas Moran's work, this book just doesn't delivery. Yes, the color reproductions are stunning; but, for a book of its size, the prints are tiny. Panoramic images that should span two pages are smaller than the postcards I sell in my bookstores.

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A Guide to my Book Rating System:

1 star = The wood pulp would have been better utilized as toilet paper.
2 stars = Don't bother, clean your bathroom instead.
3 stars = Wasn't a waste of time, but it was time wasted.
4 stars = Good book, but not life altering.
5 stars = This book changed my world in at least some small way.

stunning paintings
The paintings are revelatory, the reproductions are sharp and beautifully reproduced, and the colors simply shine. Unfortunately, they are also very small, often not much larger than a big postcard, and even where a whole page has been devoted to a painting, artful layout with large white borders has reduced the actual reproduction to 70% of the size it could have been. With such monumental landscapes, I think that this is a great drawback that leaves me squinting in frustration. These are the sort of paintings which should be reproduced in large format, with plates showing details of sections of the painting. Such a pity when the quality of the book is superb in every other sense, and a missed opportunity. Needless to say, the layout and font is also perfect.

An Amazing Book
My wife and I were looking for a Thomas Moran book with LOTS of reproductions of his pictures.This book appeared to be what we were looking for.I had Amazon find a copy for me and I gave it to my wife as abirthday present.It was perfect.Lots of reproductions.Lots of goodinformation.Well-organized.

Moran is a favorite
This book is the next best thing to seeing a Moran in a Museum. I'm a landscape artist and love his work. The book took me out West where Moran painted and made me feel the experience. A fantastic experience! ... Read more

Product Description
Presenting the first in-depth study of Thomas Moran's early western landscapes, Joni Louise Kinsey describes how the artist created three monumental paintings—The Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone (1872), The Chasm of the Colorado (1873-74), and The Mountain of the Holy Cross (1875)—that, in the aftermath of the Civil War, evoked the nation's spiritual journey and suggestsed its cultural upheaval. The author describes how the paintings reflected a new national identity of both failure and promise, and helped open the West for tourism and travel. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

where's the color?
A bit of a major disappointment for a book with good B/W illustrations, this is a book about one of the great colorist painters of landscape art. Disheartened.

thomas moran and the american west
This is one of the most extensive books on Thomas Moran's life.The Smithsonian recently published it (1992).It also has an excellent assortment of pictures of his works.For a complete overview of his work and life, this is the book to have. ... Read more

Product Description
Watercolor images of Yellowstone Park painted in the early 1870s by artist Thomas Moran shifted America's gaze westward. Published as a portfolio of chromolithographs by Boston lithographer Louis Prang, these brilliant reproductions--with a companion text on Yellowstone geology by explorer Ferdinand Hayden--were the first color images of our first national park widely available to the general public. As such, they helped shape America's growing fascination with the West.

The Yellowstone National Park portfolio, comprising nine images of Yellowstone and six of other sites, is also now regarded as the finest example of chromolithography ever produced. Yet today these images are less well known than Moran's dramatic oil paintings and are usually admired merely as curiosities of an obsolete technology.

Joni Kinsey, a preeminent authority on Moran, shows that these and other chromolithographs by the artist in fact had an important place in American visual culture and were a vital part of the artist's career. Thomas Moran's West reproduces this renowned collection, along with two dozen other color plates and over 100 black-and-white illustrations, to recapture their impact on the American imagination.

Chromolithography was outmoded by 1900 but represented an important transition in American art. Whereas previously published images of the West had been black-and-white engravings, Moran's chromolithographs had the vivid beauty of high art but could be acquired by individuals who couldn't afford originals. Today the prints are highly valued by collectors, who will appreciate seeing them with related field sketches and watercolors--and in some instances rare printer's proofs from Joslyn Art Museum. Kinsey describes the making and popularity of "chromos," chronicles the debates over their artistic legitimacy, and tells how this medium competed with other forms of picture-making in the late nineteenth century. She also explores Moran's relationship with Prang and thoroughly analyzes the Yellowstone images--including those held back from publication.

Both a visual feast and an authoritative treatise, Thomas Moran's West gives us breath-taking images of unspoiled wilderness as it sheds new light on how artistic portrayals of the West contributed to our national identity.

This book features 167 photographs, 50 in full color. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Superior publication on lithography.
The superior color print quality of the many Thomas Moran oil painting, watercolor and chromolithograph reproductions herein distinguishes this book from many others. The Louis Prang chromolithographs from the mid 1800s taken from these works established an historic milestone in printmaking. Never before in contemporary art historic literature has such attention been paid to Moran's "Yellowstone Portfolio" and the chromolithography movement in general.Author Joni Kinsey places Moran, Prang and chromolithography within their cultural contexts."Thomas Moran's West" is one of only two published current studies on the subject of chromolithography and the only on Moran chromos.The other is "Democratic Art: An Exhibition on the History of Chromolithography in America 1840-1900". Few of Moran's numerous b/w etchings are represented. For the etchings see "The Prints of Thomas Moran in the Thomas Gilcrease Institute" by Anne Morand and Nancy Friese. "Thomas Moran's West" is highly recommended but not at the price quoted by these sellers. I was lucky and got a discarded library copy that is in perfect condition for a mere $99.00! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

dreadful book
This is a dreadful book on Thomas Moran, the colorist. Few illustrations in color. Those that are printed in color are compromised by the poor printing. Do not buy!

Where's the Color?
I've seen Moran originals in museums. They are delightful and the color is one of their primary appeals, the drawing being the other. Very few of the reproductions in this book are in color. That is a shame because it seems to be the case with mostbooks about his work. He will never be fully appreciated until there are some good color reproductions available.

Disappointing
Moran's watercolors were made on the spot to capture the true colors that he would reproduce in his well known oils. Awatercolor painter myself, I have been very interested in this book for years. It has been very disappointing to find that it has only 10 color illustrations (and not good quality ones), and 50 b/w. (I had ordered this book before Scott's review was posted, bad luck).This is an information usually missing from book reviews or "product detail" lines, and I think it should be provided. It is the fourth time it happens to me with Amazon.Anyway, I think Ms. Clark essay deserves a better rating, but I usually buy art books for the color plates. ... Read more

Product Description
Orphaned early, Una Moss grows up in Ireland with her grandda and cannot remember her parents. At university and studying medicine, Una meets her first love, Aidan - but does she really know him? What about the whispers about her parents' death and how political factors intrude into her life?Amazon.com Review
Entrapment is a recurring theme in the art of Thomas Moran. His firstnovel, The Man in theBox, concerns a Jew hiding from Nazis in a secret, boxlike room inan Austrian farmer's barn. His next, The World I Made for Her,features a protagonist imprisoned within his own disease-ravaged body. InWater, Carry Me, Moran expands beyond physical constraints toexplore the greatest trap of all: love. When we first meet Una Moss, sheis in her final year of medical school in Ireland. Orphaned at the age of8, she has grown up uneasily straddling two worlds: that of herworking-class grandfather, Rawney, with whom she lives in a village outsideof Cork, and the upper-class milieu of private school and moneyed friends.Early in the novel Moran hints at the political themes that will soonenmesh her: Rawney, a railroad engineer, frequently carries mysteriouscrates "all the way to Sligo, up near the Ulster border," and boasts of his"dangerous friends." In reality, though, his friends are more endangeredthan dangerous: Mungo, the fisherman who occasionally brings strangepackages ashore in his boat, is the victim of a mysterious shipwreck; Desand Mick, who help load the contraband, are both picked up by the police,only to reappear weeks later with "a hole in their lives, an awful, secretspace, a haunting."

Indeed everyone in Moran's novel is haunted in some way by theconflict in Northern Ireland. Una herself was orphaned because of herfather's involvement with one side or the other:

The violence is like a virus moving invisibly through our blood, the IRAand the Ulster Defense Association the Typhoid Marys of it. It kills some,and deadens the hearts of the rest of us. Nobody but idiots--and the madfanatics--are immune.

Customer Reviews (19)

A refreshing break from happily ever after.
A beautiful, haunting tale that deftly weaves a rich and complex set of emotions. This heartbreaking story is wonderful, and an utter classic in the tradition of Tristan and Isolt, Wuthering Heights, and The Reluctant Fundamentalist. I borrowed this book from a college library and the story clung to me until I finally bought my own copy. It tells one of the best stories about the effects of the Troubles had on the fate of one bright young woman. The conflict between Protestants and Catholics is not the focus of the plot, but the way they influence the life of the witty and truly human protagonist's choices shows that love can come into a life and make it unrecognizably terrible.

Powerful emotional ride
Owning an Irish American newspaper, and reviewing over one hundred books with Irish themes the last three years, I now have to revise my list of top ten favorite books, having just completed "Water, Carry Me" last night. As other reviewers have hinted, it's a book that stays with you. I woke up in the middle of the night still agonizing over the lovers, Uma and Aidan.
I would love to see a sequel, with Aidan redeeming himself, writing to substain Uma's spirits, but I suppose he is beyond redemption and would have to live with his guilt, as he has all the years since the Remembrance Day Celebration.
I have been in Northern Ireland, have visited the IRA prisoners in Long Kesh, questioning their choices and commitment. It is almost beyond understanding, though they've often tried to explain it to me. As an American, perhaps we can never understand.
I also write novels about the Troubles, but in "Water,Carry Me", Moran has definitely raised the bar. I never wanted it to end, and while I knew in time Aidan's secrets would be revealed, I never foresaw the consequences to Uma.
Since I work part-time in a bookstore, I've had my eye on this book for awhile. After reading "The World I Made For Her" I was pretty sure I'd love it, but had no idea it would be so powerful.

A hauntingly beautiful and heartbreaking story
Although the title may indicate "Water, Carry Me" is a love story, it is, in fact, so much more.Set against the backdrop of a divided Ireland, the novel tracks a few years in the life of Una Moss, the book's fascinating narrator, as she rides the turbulent waves of her early 20's.

Orphaned at eight and raised by her grandfather Rawney in Cobh, County Cork, Una is perhaps one of the most interesting and compelling characters in recent fiction.Cynical yet naive, insightful yet oblivious, she is a wholly real person and draws us into her world and her experiences as she comes of age as an adult.As she enters university, she watches her longtime friends Fallon, Collie, and Gaynor drawing away from her, changing and developing tastes and interests completely different from her own, and finds her best friends are not who she thought they were.And when "the Troubles" violently hit home for Una, she slowly discovers the truth behind the long-held secrets in her family, and her life suddenly becomes enmeshed in that conflict.

But all of these changes become secondary when she meets Aidan Ferrel, a draughtsman from the North, who sweeps her off her feet with his self-depricating charm and adoration of her.Una believes she has found true love and begins to plan her future with the man who, in her eyes, is perfection.Of course, Una then finds out she doesn't quite know everything she thought she did about Aidan.

Moran's deft writing moves the book along at a swift pace, and the interest never sags.This is a thoroughly engrossing, enjoyable, and ultimately heartbreaking read.

You will love Derdriu Ring's voice!
As a male who loves romance novels I instantly fell in love with Derdriu Rings Irish voice. I could listen to her for hours!!! But equally enjoyable and believable was the plot. You are never sure if its fiction or reality. Sad ending mimicing real life. This is the first Thomas Moran I have read and it will not be the last.

Secrets, Trust, More Secrets = Betrayal
I knew from the beginning as I read this book that it was going to be tragic, but the flavor in the reading was reading how it was going to achieve it.I was not disappointed.Una, the protaganist, seems doomed from the beginning of the story--from the secret way her parents died, to her grandfather, Rawney, and his dubious friends who are somehow (or are they?) connected to the I.R.A.In fact, all of Una's life is somehow always connected to the I.R.A. and not because she chose that way.

The crux of the book was when she met Aiden, who seemed the perfect man - but then was he the perfect man?Even to the end, she still could not grasp any other image of him.This was her tragic flaw.

I recommend the book to all even though there were some "Irish" stereotypes. ... Read more

Product Description
The Man in the Box is a story of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances--a first novel about the inextricably intertwined relationships of a young girl and boy, the Jewish doctor the boy's family is hiding from the Germans, and the unforgiving community of their isolated Austrian village.Amazon.com Review
"During the war, we kept our Jew in a box."So begins TheMan in the Box, Thomas Moran's debut novel.The Jew is Dr. RobertWeiss, an Austrian doctor on the run from the Nazis; the box is asmall space built into the back of a hayloft owned by Herr Lukasser,an Austrian farmer.In the course of his two-year confinement,Dr. Weiss's only contact with the outside world is through Lukasser'sson, Niki, whose life the doctor saved many years before, and Niki'sblind girlfriend, Sigi.To these two teenagers he imparts the storyof his life, fantastical tales conveyed in whispers through the woodenwall of his cell. Writing in spare, clean prose, Mr. Moran capturesperfectly the tumultuous interior life of children on the verge ofadulthood: the petty cruelties they visit on one another, their sexualstirrings and inchoate longings of adolescence. In the case of Niki,the added burden of the secret he must keep makes this passageparticularly perilous--to himself, his family, and the Man in the Box. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Not at all what I expected, but I began to enjoy it
I thought this would be the adventure of a Jew in hiding during WWII. Actually it focuses on the lives of a small village in Austria during that time - the family that hid him, their neighbors, the school teacher, and most of the others in the town in one way or another. It had less to do with the Jew being discovered or thewar, and much more about the adolescent years of the protagonist Niki and his/her blind best friend Sigi. (I challenge you to prove which sex Niki is; everytime I thought I knew for sure I was turned around again.) The story seemed to me to be about tolerance and acceptance of oneself and others in the 1940's, with many of the conversations taking place between the Jew hidden behind a false wall in the barn, and Niki and Sigi.

Ambiguous Tale of Coming of Age and Holocaust
Thomas Moran has made a wonderful debut as a fiction author with this compelling, chilling, moving tale of Niki Lukasser growing up in Nazi Austria with a Jew, Dr. Weiss, walled up for his own protection, in the barn.This is an unusual story but it is created and built up in ways that make it believable. No good deed or bad will go unpunished and betrayal is an always quietly lurking shadow among the people.The relationships are complicated, particulary the child and the man in the box, and the author makes ambiguous all the various choices of the characters.There is no black or white, good or evil, just people making good and bad decisions, often for very personal and odd reasons.

Is Niki A Boy or a Girl?
I liked this novel very much and thought the characters were believable and memorable. I think Moran captured the moral reality of everyday heroism--as well as the fact that many people who do good just do it and aren't sure why, just as those who do evil just do it. But I am very puzzled by Moran's handling of Niki and am still not sure of the sex of the protagonist although, unlike my co-reviewers,............... Perhaps Niki's vague sexual identity is meant to represent the thin line between good and eveil, Christian and Jew, who knows? I found it all a bit distracting. But I loved the book and will buy Moran's other works.

Moran better not lose his grip...
Because he is on the verge (in my opinion) of greatness.If he challenges himself more as a writer and a wordsmith and deepens his thinking, he will be under serious consideration for the Nobel.He is a humanist.And hiswriting is great humanist writing, but his ability (again, my humbleopinion) has not yet matured.*ALL* of his books so far are worth reading.

Interesting gem with complex characters
The strength of The Man in the Box is the clarity of the depiction of complex characters - even bit characters.The narrator's grandfather, for example, is referred to only in one short passage explaining thehalf-orphanhood of the narrator's best friend.Yet in the short passage areal three dimensional portrait of a hard, drinking man unmissed except,perhaps, by his wife.

No one is wholely evil or wholely saint ... in factthe motivation for hiding the Jew in the box is less than morally pure. And the Jew, isolated in his box with adolescents as his primary audience,has a wide range of responses to his current situation and to his excessivetime to review his past.

This is not yet a great book but it is very goodand its strength indicate that Thomas Moran is a writer well worth watchingfor. ... Read more

Product Description
During the years following the Civil War, many artists, including Homer, Church, and Moran, created images of America's scenic wonders and great landscape icons. These works, as well as decorative art objects, popular literature, photographs, and other ephemera helped to make the country's landscape a source of national pride and promoted landscape tourism.

FREDERIC CHURCH, WINSLOW HOMER, AND THOMAS MORAN: Tourism and the American Landscape is a major exhibition mounted by the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum which will showcase, for the first time in more than two decades, the museum's extraordinary collection of more than 2000 paintings and drawings, which encompasses the largest grouping of Homer and Church objects in the world. Five original essays will accompany the 200 illustrations. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Travel Paintings from Early America
I am a big fan of American Impressionism and I like all three of the artists featured in this book.It's a scholarly review of the images that made Americans travel to see if the scenery was as magical as these artists depicted.From the New England coast, Niagra Falls, Grand Canyon, and Yosemite these artist were engaging in a recording of scenery that would soon be altered by the hordes of tourists that followed.
While photography was just beginning to record many of these same scenes it was not in color and it lacked the ephemeral quality that master painters like Church, Homer, and Moran were able to create.
I'm fairly certain this is the first time three of my favorite artists are featured in one book and show favorite scenes of magnificent American places.It is sold at many art galleries for much more than one can find on Amazon.It's picture intensive, meaning if you prefer more examples and less text you will be happy with this effort.A well-balanced effort. ... Read more

Product Description
Rarely in the history of American art does one find afamily of artists as extensive as the Morans.The Peale family ofPhiladelphia comes to mind, but such examples are few and far between.Of all the Moran family members, Thomas Moran is the most renowned,famous for his expansive panoramas of the American West from the 1870sto the turn of the century.However, with his wife, Mary Nimmo Moran,also an artist, the two shared a pronounced interest in painting theterrain of New Jersey and East Hampton, Long Island and becameprolific watercolorists and etchers of eastern views.This bookhighlights previously unknown watercolors by both Thomas and MaryNimmo Moran in addition to a selection of their etched works.Whilecontemporary scholarship regards Thomas Moran as the foremost painterin the family, many of the Morans were accomplished artists and heldpositions of great importance in the late nineteenth century.Thispublication addresses the artistry of multiple members of the extendedMoran family including painted seascapes, portraits, and genre scenesby Edward, his son Leon, and Peter Moran, brother to Edward andThomas. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Great Book!
I don't know what's the deal with the other customer who gave feedback, it's a great book. I saw it for the first time at a Museum bookstore and have it on it's way. I love Thomas Moran's work. This is the only book I know of with this large quantity of Field Sketches by Moran. I spent some time looking at the book while at the museum. It made me (an experienced animation artist) and my drawing partner (an Imagineer) get really pumped about doing some field sketchbook work. The scale of the drawings doesn't matter much. They're just great to see. Can't wait until it gets here!!

Disappointing
This book was not represented accurately in the on-line synopsis. Only 8% of the illustrations are in color (small scale) and the remaining 92% are "very small" (tiny) and undisernible in resolution and detail. This book is specifically to be used only as an inventory catalogue of Thomas Moran's sketches, and is not intended for fine art study. Only art collectors, curators, and/or dealers may find this book of interest and value. The book arrived with minor dents on the cover. I found this publication disappointing. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An American Master
The Poetry of Place: Works on Paper by Thomas Moran was published in conjunction wth the exhibit from the Gilcrease Museum.This book holds a select, exquisite collection of watercolor and various mixed-media works on paper by notable American landscape painter Thomas Moran. Within the book's 71 pages, the reader is treated to seldom seen Moran works, and virtually all in color. While the book shows work done throughout Moran's life, the bulk of the images show his exploratory sketches from his travels throughout the American West. Anne Morand's Introduction is concise and informative, while Donna Gustafson's text gets wordy in places.All in all, the book is a quick and excellent read, profusely illustrated and priced exceedingly well below its real instructional value.
... Read more

Product Description
13 of Moran's marine paintings and their significance. ... Read more

Product Description
This book focuses on design in the domain of human-computer interaction. Including a broad sampling of case studies as well as narrower theoretical or empirical studies, it includes consideration of educational uses of design rationale, methods for teaching it in industry, and applications to a variety of software and user interface/application domains. The volume promises to be the largest collection of work on design rationale ever assembled, and thereby to energize the considerable, widespread interest in this topic. It will also act as a focus for the existing but scattered work in this domain.
... Read more

Product Description
The emotionally stirring story of desperation and intrigue in the wake of World War II.

Anja Wienewska, frail and anxious, has narrowly survived World War II in German-occupied Krakow-and how she did it is her ugly secret. She meets Walter Fass-a soldier from the defeated side, with secrets of his own-at the gate of a displaced persons camp. They form a marriage of convenience, each desperately hoping to become someone new, to leave behind the haunting memories of who he was-and what he did-in wartime. They flee to Walter's family farm at the foot of the Italian Alps and there become more to each other than refugees with a common enemy. But when an old war comrade of Walter's shows up on their doorstep, their fragile peace begins to unravel. Anja the Liar is the story of three people who cannot leave the war behind, who carry it inside of them, informing their every thought, every action-and the devastating consequences of their uneasy alliance. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

almost perfect
I have read and loved all of Moran's other books- he has a way of bringing you into the place and time, and a way with drawing complex characters before your eyes. I eagerly read Anja the Liar, and sorry to see it end. The story has stayed in my mind for several days now - on one hand having pity for the two couples, on the other thinking that what happened to them was sweet revenge, and then again thinking: there but for the grace of luck goes us all.

One problem with the book that keeps it from being perfect: As Anja learns to trust Walter and become secure, she meets his friend and they become bosom buddies.Anja shares secrets with her that istotally out of character with the wary, insular, secretive young lady from just a year before, so that the 180 degree turn did not fit. It was of course this newfound trust that drives the rest of the book, so I understand why the author did it. But it bothered me and still seemed a bit contrived.

That being said - I highly recommend this powerful book that . Those characters will stay with me for a long time I suspect, as his other characters in other books have.

An interesting read
I found Anja the Liar to be one of those reads that, as you advance through it, it captures your interest. It isa hard book to recommend since it is somewhat difficult to define. It does have some interesting historical material related to the whole DP situation at the conclusion of WWII and the disbursement of people at that time. But I did think that the odd triangle that develops in the latter part of the novel is somehwat contrived ..and that some ofthe characters were not fully defined ...but saying all this, I did enjoy the novel and found it to be a real page turner towards the end.

Too Much Jargon
Thomas Moran usually blows my socks off with his amazing stories of overcoming the skeletons in people's closets.However, Anja the Liar, although a good read, can easily put you to sleep with its excessive detail to military jargon and extensive use of Polish, German, Russian, Chech, and French.Half the time, I skipped pages due to mounting paragraphs of foreign languages.A big disappointment...but I'll keep reading Moran's stuff, b/c he's just that good!

Beautiful Imagery and Characters
Anyone who has read Moran's previous work knows that he has the uncanny ability to place the reader not only in the time and place of his characters, but also in their hearts and minds. You are where they are, feeling what they feel, suffering what they suffer. You feel all the joy and pain, along with the shame and guilt.It is this willingness to risk the reader's sympathy that sets Moran's writing apart.

In Anja The Liar we are transported to a post-World War II Europe that is filled with uncertainty. Anja finds herself in a camp for displaced persons with no real desire to be released. She seems devoid of hope, and racked with guilt over her betrayals during the War. She meets Walter, and dares to think that there may be a way back to life. Like Anja, and most others, Walter also harbors his own guilt over actions he was "forced" to take during the war.

From Poland, to Austria, to the Tyrol, or wherever the reader is taken, Moran describes the landscape, and the people, with absolute clarity. The detail he uses shows that this is an author who has done his research, and cares that the reader is given a real feel for the world in which these characters live. Anja The Liaris a beautiful, daring, and sometimes heartbreaking book. It is a journey you will want to take.

Great drama
In 1945 Anja Wienewska stands inside the fence that contains those refuges from the war with no papers.Former Wehrmact Captain Walter Fass sees her and begins talking to her in Polish, as he believes she is from Poland.Anja ignores him until he speaks in German; she insists she is German and not Polish.Anja is from Krakow, Poland where she betrayed her people to the German occupiers.Under Nazi control, she learned how to lie.

Walter has dark secrets too from his time in Yugoslavia.Needing to atone and appease his conscience and help Anna, he marries her.They travel to his farm where she gives birth to their child as they share a camaraderie.However, as their past surfaces with the appearance of Walter's war comrade, their fragile relationship seems to go kaput as the war taught both to distrust everyone.

ANJA THE LAIR is a deep look at the cost of a war on individuals trying to survive during the fighting and its aftermath.The story line is incredibly insightful as Thomas Moran paints a gloomy Europe still reeling from the devastation of WW II.Walter and Anja answer the Edwin Starr question of "War, what is good for?" as both have paid with their souls to endure the fight and remain compensating the piper as neither can trust anyone nor give their love to anybody including their spouse.This is a strong late 1940s drama that rips asunder the other psychological costs of war.

Harriet Klausner ... Read more