Product Description
Chapters: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dean Acheson, Fred Gwynne, Mcgeorge Bundy, C. Douglas Dillon, Sam Waterston, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., Quentin Roosevelt, W. Averell Harriman, Adrian S. Fisher, Kermit Roosevelt, Groton School, Richard M. Bissell, Jr., Joseph Grew, Harry Mathews, Bobby Scott, Jim Cooper, Endicott Peabody, John Hay Whitney, Robert R. Mccormick, Frederick Trubee Davison, George Biddle, Bradford Washburn, Louis Auchincloss, Hiram Bingham Iv, Gordon Gund, Bronson M. Cutting, Curtis Sittenfeld, Harry Payne Whitney, Francis Biddle, Daniyal Mueenuddin, Erastus Corning 2nd, Eugene V. Rostow, Joseph Alsop, Richard Whitney, Ayi Kwei Armah, Jonathan Brewster Bingham, Sherwood Washburn, Joseph M. Mccormick, Hunter Lewis, Archibald Bulloch Roosevelt, Jr., Walter Russell Mead, E. Roland Harriman, James C. Auchincloss, William Bundy, Laurence Curtis, John Train, Joseph Willard Roosevelt, Francis Keppel, Fuller Potter, Tracy Barnes, Stanley Rogers Resor, Newbold Morris, Hamilton Coolidge, Ellery Sedgwick, A.b.c. Whipple, J. Watson Webb, Jr., Richard Hely-Hutchinson, 8th Earl of Donoughmore, Anson Montgomery, John J. Hollister, Jr.. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 353. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Franklin D. Roosevelt -A young Roosevelt in 1899 sailing with Helen R. Roosevelt and his father James Roosevelt.Roosevelt is an Anglicized form of the Dutch surname 'Van Rosevelt,' or 'Van Rosenvelt', meaning 'from field of roses.' Although some use an Anglicized spelling pronunciation of , that is, with the vowels of rue and felt, Franklin used , with the vowel of the English rose. One of the wealthiest and oldest families in New York State, the Roosevelts distinguished themselves in areas other than politics. Franklin's first cousin, Ellen Roosevelt, was the 1890 U.S. Open Champions...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=10979 ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: Martin Sheen, Hugh Laurie, Sam Waterston, Kiefer Sutherland, Jerry Orbach, Anthony Edwards, Michael C. Hall, James Gandolfini, Dennis Franz. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 90. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Ramón Antonio Gerard Estévez (born August 3, 1940), better known by his stage name Martin Sheen, is an actor best known for his performances as Captain Willard in the film Apocalypse Now, Confederate General Robert E. Lee in the film Gettysburg, and President Josiah Bartlet on the television series The West Wing. He has worked for some of cinemas most prominent directors, including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone, Francis Ford Coppola, Richard Attenborough, Terrence Malick and Mike Nichols. Along with the critical acclaim he has received as an actor, he has become known as an activist. Born and raised in Ohio, United States, with Irish and Galician parents, Sheen is also an Irish citizen. He is the father of actors Emilio Estévez, Ramón Estévez, Carlos Irwin Estévez (Charlie Sheen), and Renée Estévez, and is the brother of Joe Estévez, also an actor. Sheen was born in Dayton, Ohio, the son of Mary Ann (née Phelan), an immigrant from Borrisokane, County Tipperary, Ireland, and Francisco Estévez, who was a factory worker/machinery inspector from Parderrubias, Galicia, Spain, near the border of northern Portugal. After moving to Dayton, Estévez worked for several decades for the National Cash Register Company. Sheen's mother fought in the Irish War of Independence due to her family's connections to the Irish Republican Army. Sheen lived on Brown Street in the South Park neighborhood, and was one of 10 siblings (nine boys and one girl). One of his brothers is actor Joe Estévez. He attended Chaminade High School (now Chaminade Julienne Catholic High Schoo...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=68131 ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: Graham Greene, Yo-Yo Ma, Sarah Mclachlan, Adrienne Clarkson, Sam Waterston, Wendy Mesley, Alec Baldwin, Callum Keith Rennie, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Colleen Dewhurst, Tony Burman, Ellen Page, Maury Chaykin, Sarah Polley, Brian Cox, Paul Gross, Rick Mercer, Rachel Mcadams, Stephen Mchattie, Megan Follows, Russell Peters, Colm Feore, Seán Cullen, Jackie Burroughs, Chris Cuthbert, Peter Mansbridge, Torri Higginson, Shirley Douglas, Ron Maclean, Erin Karpluk, Mary Walsh, Ian Tracey, Kris Lemche, Bob Mckeown, Jim Hughson, Janet Wright, Graeme Campbell, Tina Keeper, Brian Stewart, Tracey Deer, Paul Soles, Shenae Grimes, Ernie Coombs, Yanna Mcintosh, Wendy Crewson, Rex Murphy, Donald Brittain, Shaun Majumder, Gil Cardinal, Robin Cass, Céline Galipeau, David Cubitt, Victor Malarek, Alisen Down, Arsinée Khanjian, Diane D'aquila, Michael Murphy, Diana Swain, Joe Schlesinger, Stephan Carrier, Cathy Jones, Hart Hanson, Patrick Mckenna, Gavin Crawford, Robert Wisden, Brad Turner, Lucy Decoutere, Cara Pifko, Sophie Lorain, Beverly Thomson, John J. Thomson, Andy Nulman, Ali Mukaddam, Hélène Joy, Mike Clattenburg, Evan Solomon, Kevin Brauch, Lorne Frohman, Dan Matheson, Tanya Allen, Kay Tremblay, Ken Finkleman, Anna Maria Tremonti, Greg Thomey, Patrick Brown, Terry Leibel, Carol Spier, Sara Botsford, David New, Nicky Guadagni, Michel Jetté, Mark Lee, Ksenia Solo, Asaph Fipke, Neil Macdonald, Sonja Smits, Michael Riley, Julie Stewart, Tom Kennedy, Bette Macdonald, Mark Zsifkovits, Martha Gibson, Richard Chevolleau, Anne Marie La Traverse, Avis Favaro, Christina Jennings. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 425. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Adrienne Louise Clarkson (née Adrienne Louise Poy, 10 February 1939) is a Canadian journalist and stateswoman who served as Governor General of Canada, th...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=161185 ... Read more

Product Description
High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Samuel Atkinson "Sam" Waterston (born November 15, 1940) is an Academy Award-nominated American actor noted particularly for his Golden Globe-winning portrayal of Jack McCoy on the NBC television series Law & Order. He has also appeared in many feature films.Waterston, the third of four siblings, (Roberta, George and Ellen) was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His mother, Alice Tucker (née Atkinson), was an American Mayflower descendant and worked as a landscape painter, and his father, George Chychele Waterston, was an immigrant from Leith, Scotland and a semanticist and language teacher. ... Read more

Product Description
Les achats comprennent une adhésion à l'essai gratuite au club de livres de l'éditeur, dans lequel vous pouvez choisir parmi plus d'un million d'ouvrages, sans frais. Le livre consiste d'articles Wikipedia sur : E. E. Cummings, Matt Damon, James Russell Lowell, Russi Taylor, Sam Waterston, Rama Ix, Charles Eliot Norton, China Forbes, Mindy Kaling, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Rebecca Pidgeon, Phil Brown. Non illustré. Mises à jour gratuites en ligne. Extrait : Edward Estlin Cummings, mieux connu sous le diminutif de E. E. Cummings (14 octobre 1894 - 3 septembre 1962), est un poète, écrivain et peintre américain. Son œuvre est composée de plus de neuf cents poèmes, quelques pièces, des essais, et de deux nouvelles ainsi que de nombreux dessins, esquisses et peintures. Il fut l'un des grands poètes du siècle et l'un des plus populaires. Ses éditeurs ont souvent rendu hommage à son emploi très atypique des majuscules et des règles de ponctuation en publiant ses œuvres sous le nom en minuscules e. e. cummings. Ces initiales sont celles de ses prénoms, Edward Estlin. Cummings est célèbre pour son emploi fort peu orthodoxe des majuscules et des règles de ponctuation, et son utilisation avant-gardiste et innovante des conventions syntaxiques. On retrouve dans ses écrits des signes de ponctuation inattendus et déplacés qui souvent interrompent les phrases et même les mots. Nombre de ses poèmes sont typographiés de façon irrégulière sur la page, de telle sorte qu'il est souvent difficile de les lire à haute voix. Cummings est né à Cambridge dans le Massachusetts, en 1894. Il est le fils d'Edward et Rebecca Haswell Clarke Cummings. Son père est un professeur de sociologie et de science politique à Harvard puis pasteur unitarien. Il est l'aîné d'une famille de deux enfants, sa sœur Elizabeth est sa cadette de six ans. Lui et son fils sont proches et Edward est l'un des plus ardents défenseurs de Cummings et de son œuvre. Élevé au sein d'une ...http://booksllc.net/?l=fr ... Read more

Product Description
national endowment for the arts/ the big read ... Read more

Product Description
Every morning for the thirteen years he was on Law & Order, Jerry Orbach wrote his wife a short love poem and placed it next to her coffee cup before he left for work.

Over the years Jerry wrote hundreds of notes -- all of which Elaine cherished and preserved. Now dozens of Jerry's most meaningful poems to Elaine, along with stories from his amazing career and their enduring romance, tell the tale of their life together. With essays from some of Jerry's dearest friends and a foreword by Sam Waterston, Elaine created a collection of funny and movingpoetry and a tribute to a wonderful marriage and a dearly loved man.

The world remembers Jerry as a legendary Broadway actor, Baby's father in Dirty Dancing, and of course the wisecracking detective Lenny Briscoe on Law & Order. But to his widow, Elaine, Jerry was a poet...and the love of her life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

Sadly missed
I highly suggest that you read this book.
What a true,kind and loving man.God bless
you.

Remember How I Love You - Love Letters by Jerry Orbach
I always loved Jerry Orbach as an actor and besides watching him in every episode of "Law and Order", I also got to see him on Broadway in 42nd Street.His wife wrote this book, but passed away suddenly just before it was published so she is not around to promote the book.It's a quick read about Jerry and Elaine's life together filled with lots of letters he wrote to her daily.I recommend the book for any fans of Jerry Orbach.

A Beautiful Book
This is a book that promises small, but delivers huge. It chronicles a love a husband (Jerry Orbach) has for his wife, Elaine. In "Remember How I Love You," it shows how a man does not take love for granted. Sometimes he will write with fluency. Other times he encounters the writer's block. Regardless, he will pen down his feelings to let Elaine journeys with him. Indeed, a marriage that depends only on a rare few gigantic showers of love, is no match for a marriage that flows with constant trickles of adoration and love. Little things add up.

Jerry's love letters is a way how a man shares his life journey with the most important person in his life, his wife. His love notes is an example of how ordinary words, written with an extraordinary heart makes all the difference. I warmly recommend this book for all couples. Read it. Practice it with your spouse regularly. You may save not only the money for marriage counseling, but your marriage as well. Below is one of my favourites:

"You said, 'Don't write a poem today.'
But I am writing anyway.
There's not enough time in the day
to say the things I want to say.
A million poems my whole life through,
could never tell my love for you!

XXX's
Jer" (p95)


The book closes with a touching poem (p178). This time it is from Elaine, after Jerry died. Prepare for tears. Really good ones.

4 Stars of 5.

conrade

Just Delightful
What a wonderful example for all those whose relationships last no longer than their shampoos.Sometimes a little gesture, each day, creates a love that lasts a lifetime. It did here, and we are treated to a silly and lyrical reality of just such an affair, and the real costs of television celebrity.(You really do get to wake up in the city that never sleeps.) A real story of staying the course, but never mawkish or too sentimental.A great valentine's gift, I would think.I have bias in this, however:Jerry Orbach was one of my favorite actors.

very sweet and special find
Great Book - brings a lot of love filled smiles.Cover on book was a little torn even though I bought it new.Recommend to anyone who has a deep, endearing love in their life! ... Read more

Product Description
Perhaps more than any other book "The Thirty-Nine Steps" has set the pattern for the story of the chase for a wanted man. And, of the many writers who have attempted this kind of thing since Buchan, only a very few, like Graham Greene, have managed to sustain the tension in the same way. The main character is Buchan's familiar hero, Richard Hannay who gets caught up quite suddenly on a dull London afternoon in a situation of extreme danger. Before he knows what is happening he is the obvious suspect for a murder committed in his own flat, and has to go on the run to his native Scotland. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (59)

Predictable and cliched, yet brilliant
Sometimes, 'predictable' and 'cliched' are nothing more than harmless adjectives when the execution of a concept is flawless, and since Buchan's execution of the predictable and cliched concept in "The Thirty Nine Steps" is flawless, then the adjectives 'classic' and 'exhilarating' will fit better.
The story starts off with the narrator stating that his life is dull and boring and nothing ever happens! Cue the dramatic change where something happens and it is exciting and adventureful.The narrator meets a man, discovers the same man dead days later, feels responsible for completing the dead man's mysterious mission, and then finds himself chased around the country by criminals, police, and angry Scotsman.The pace is relentless, the plot is unnecessarily complex but satisfyingly so, and the twists and turns that occur (that we know are coming but enjoy anyway) manage to accelerate the pace at every turn.To top it off, the end of the book attempts to add a weightiness to the action that is so bold its gutsy, not even mentioning the fact that the whole drama gets wrapped up (barely) in about a page.
In the hands of another author, this could have been a cheap, time killing, saturday afternoon escape worth less than the paper its printed on.It is still a great saturday afternoon escape, yet Buchan's deft hand gives it a lasting importance that should continue to influence action adventure fiction for decades (as it already has).

Review of The Thirty Nine Steps
This an old fashioned thriller which keeps the reader enthralled to the last page. My only complaint is that it was a bit short. The central character is like the type that Robert Ludlum used to write about, where practically everybody is after him and he has to use every ingenious device he can to avoid capture. I can thoroughly recomend this book.

Fast Steps
People who seek out John Buchan's first Richard Hannay adventure because they enjoyed the classic Hitchcock film or any of the other film and stage adaptations over the years will most likely be a bit disappointed.Other than Hannay, the titular steps, and a good amount of time set in Scotland, most adaptations veer wildly off from the direction Buchan took Hannay in.

In 1915, Richard Hannay returns from war duty in Africa and finds himself incredibly bored -- until he is taken into the confidence of a man who seems to have discovered an international conspiracy, and that man turns up dead in Hannay's apartment. Hanny quickly finds himself on the run from both the British police and a shadowy organization who may be trying to bring about (and make sure England and France are on the losing side of) what turns out to be World War One.

The action Hanny finds himself involved in is tame compared to today's spy thriller fiction, but Buchan keeps things moving at a fast clip and doesn't really allow his hero a chance to slow down.Hannay is quick-witted and physically able, as the main character of a thriller must be, and survives every encounter with those trying to catch him by a combination of physical prowess, good costumes, and enough deductive reasoning that even the great Holmes would admit Hannay could be close to a peer.Some of Hannay's encounters are a little too convenient, but that's the nature of stories like these: you have to willingly suspend your disbelief in the occurrence of so many coincidental encounters with colorful locals just when Hannay needs a place to hide or a cunning disguise.

As a classic of early 1900s spy/adventure fiction, it's hard to find fault with the book.There's nothing really extraneous other than a late-in-the-game fistfight outside of Pall Mall is a bit unnecessary, stretching the book's length just a tad and not really adding any palpable tension to the book's end-game.There's no love interest, or really any main female role at all, which is possibly why Hitchcock and others have created female characters to share Hannay's travails.The book works as what it is: a tight, crisp, spy thriller that introduces a world-weary but interesting main character.(Buchan went on to write several other Hannay adventures.)

Definitely recommended. It's a fast, short read.

A new production of John Buchan's spy masterpiece...
Hello everybody! I'manxiously awaiting the 2008 Masterpiece Classic production of THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS on PBS.To prepare for this momentous occasion, I am reading the Oxford World's Classics edition of Buchan's spy novel, a definitive edition. And I also have Hitchcock's 1935 film of Buchan's book to watch.

Buchan's biographer Janet Adam Smith discusses the films (from notes to the Harvie introduction in the Oxford Classic edition):
The first film adaptation was by Alfred Hitchcock in 1935, with Robert Donat as Hannay and dialogue by Ian Hay... It is still very watchable; more than can be said of its successors. Ralph Thomas made a version with Kenneth More in 1960, of which Halliwell's Film Guide comments that it was "practically a manual on how not to make a thriller"; the 1978 version, directed by Don Sharp and starring Robert Powell, was set in 1914, the only point at which its plot coincided with Buchan's book.

The Oxford World's Classic edition contains the short novel along with a fascinating introduction by Christopher Harvie with bottom-of-the-page notes, three pages of Selected Bibliography, A Chronology of John Buchan's major writings (he wrote 130 books and contributed significantly to another 150!), and 111 explanatory notes at the back of the paperback.

Of interest to me was a bit of literary trivia: the British Weekly comment in its July 1, 1915 edition. British Weekly, Harvie tells us, was the maker-and-breaker of literary reputations:

We have everything here that can be wished---an excellent cipher story, with one or two points of novelty, a murder, a big subterranean business, a flight in a stolen motor-car, a monoplane floating with deadly intent, a Radical candidate, and all the rest. Not all the rest, for the woman has not yet appeared on the scene. But nobody must miss the tale.

The British Weekly had a while to await for the woman to appear. I understand that two main female characters were added to the Hitchcock film but no prominent woman appears in the book.

Wonder what PBS will do?

39 steps
The book arrived on time and in good shape.Have seen the movie in several versions and wanted to read the book.Very good and suspenseful. ... Read more

Product Description
The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder's second novel, won him the first of his three Pulitzer Prizes. The novel opens in the aftermath of an inexplicable tragedy—a tiny footbridge in Peru breaks, and five travelers hurtle to their deaths. Most townspeople think to themselves with secret joy, "Within 10 minutes myself...."

But for Brother Juniper, a humble Franciscan friar who witnesses the catastrophe, the question is inescapable: Why those five? Suddenly, Brother Juniper is committed to discover what manner of lives these five disparate people led—and whether it was divine intervention that took their lives, or a capricious fate.

Wilder maintained in his works that true meaning and beauty are found in ordinary experience. This is especially true of The Bridge of San Luis Rey. From the very beginning to the stunning conclusion, the listener is absorbed into the individual stories of the five victims, and how their destinies intertwine. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (104)

excellent novel
The Bridge of San Luis Rey is a masterpiece--beautifully written, evocative, and sensitive.A pleasure to read.

Well written, but...
The book "The Bridge of San Louis Rey" plagues you with the question, "Why those five?" The book then goes into a small segment of the personal lives of all the victims of the bridge collapse, ultimately leaving it up to you to decide and think about. The book was extremely well written, with careful attention to vocabulary, and sentence formation. Therefore, I give the book a 4 out of 5. All that being said, I personally did not like the book, it's just not the genre that i like to spend my time reading.

Eclipsed by the "Boom" Writers

This book is a 1928 Pulitzer Prize winning novel that may have been a breakthrough for its time.As I read it I could not help but wonder how this content would have fared in the hands of "Boom" writers such as Octavio Paz or Gabriel Garcia Marquez.Had I read this before I read the South American Boom writers I might have had more appreciation for it.

I checked Wilder's bio and could not find any time spent in Peru or South America prior to (or after) writing the book unless it was during his Coast Guard service. Perhaps its weakness is fundamental: that it is an impression of rather than the actual experience of Latin America. At the time it was written, it may be the closest English speaking readers could get to this type of cross-cultural literary experience. Now readers have a variety of authentic voices to chose from.

Wilder has created a good book, but is not a great book. I understand that it is on some lists as a great American classic. I recommend that those who compile these lists try some of the late twentieth century Latin American writers.

What am I missing? I found the book dull and unsatisfying.
I have read all the positive reviews and I am a bit stumped. I found the early chapter about the relationship between the mother and daughter very tedious and meaningless. I almost stopped reading after that chapter, but slogged on through the rest of the book with little uptick in enjoyment. I believe people just feel they have to love and praise the "classics" no matter what. I found the book dull and unsatisfying. I'm so glad it was a short book. The most enjoyable part of the book was looking up the many words I did not understand. I'm very glad I put the [...] app on my iPhone.

No epiphany here....A book about the obvious
I read this book to the point in the story where the bridge collapses and Father Juniper decides to investigate the lives of the victims to see what they had in common, thereby discovering the logic behind God's will. At this point I completely lost interest. Why proceed? Anyone with any life experience already knows what he'll find. NOTHING! No logic,no hidden meaning, no consistant thread! Why did the bridge collapse when they were on it? BECAUSE S--T HAPPENS, THAT'S WHY! No other reason! Who didn't already know this? Why wade through the rest of the book to read a conclusion you can easily predict?

Nevertheless, wade through I did. What was revealed was that each person was a typical human being who loved, was loved, had flaws, etc. But didn't we already know this would be the case? His final conclusions about the connections between people and "love being the only survival, the only meaning" are basically the same inadequate, ultimately unsatisfying conclusions I've heard repeated before in casual discussions. Implied is that nothing is permanent, there is no forever, no certainty of any existence beyond this one. We live, die, are briefly remembered by our loved ones who eventually die themselves, and then it's as if we never existed. Can anyone sing "Dust in the Wind"?

Everyone I've ever talked to who had given much thought to the purpose of life, unless they had strong religious convictions, essentially reached this same conclusion. I doubt most of them had read Mr. Wilder's book.

Wilder has written a book in an attempt to illustrate the obvious. Perhaps he was too young, and too inexperienced in life, to realize at the time how obvious it was. ... Read more