No one, not even for a single instant, can look out at the world through the eyes of someone else's mind. Yet, Wurtzel tries to bring us into hers and show us what it's like to view the world from a mind suffering from hereditary (probably manic-)depression. And since she is trying to show us what it's like INSIDE her mind, is it any wonder that her mostly stream-of-consciousness narrative tends to be self-centered? Who of us in the privacy of our minds is NOT self-centered? After all, we are all fated to be only ourselves 24/7 for our entire lives. And constantly suffering, as Wurtzel does from severe bouts of depression, interspersed with irrational frenzies, is it any wonder that Wurtzel… Read more
WHATfS THE NEWS? WHATfS THE NEWS? This distinctly human obsession apparently dates all the way back to our original acquisition of the use of language itself. But the Who? What? Where? When? How? Why? presentation of that news that we are so used to today took us a bit longer to develop -- say, not till the middle of the nineteenth century -- as Stephens shows in this highly readable book.
Taking on the task of relating the entire history of news telling from its very beginnings lost in the prehistoric past all the way up to the cable television and Internet of today seems impossible; yet Stephens certainly makes a good try. He recreates the prehistoric period with sociological… Read more
Suppose you had to write an entire history of America in fewer than three hundred pages, including maps and photos, and aimed at readers who know nothing about it. Where would you start?@The founding of Jamestown? The centuries before that? How many pages would you devote to the Civil War and its causes? To the changes in everyday life@brought about by the railroads? To the Depression? What would you leave out? What very complex and controversial issues like the Civil Rights Movement would you have to simply gloss over? Not easy, huh? Yet, this is exactly the task that Riendeau sets out to accomplish for the history of Canada. And for the most part he succeeds!
