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Welcome to Savannah, America's Most Beautiful City
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In January 1994, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt, came out in hardback with an initial print run of 25,000 copies, and stood Savannah on its ear. By the end of that month, the book was into its third printing. Read more about its influence and a short review here.
When I arrived in Savannah the first time for a brief 3-day stop enroute to a conference in Atlanta, this small Southern city so captivated me with its sensuous beauty that then and there I decided I had to live here. Before the three days were over, I’d signed a contract to buy a house. Shortly thereafter, I was resident in “America’s Most Beautiful City.” In the 14 years since, I have browsed and collected numerous books, many of them pictorial, about this lush city on the river. But never have I come across one that so vividly captures the essence of my adopted home as Savannah: A Photographic Portrait. Photographer Debbi Zepp breathes life into the magnificent old buildings of the Historic District whether they are Federal, Queen Anne, Romanesque, Gothic, or a host of others, all difficult to photograph, all enthralling. Her portraits of these buildings alone can set the soul soaring. However, Zepp covers it all. From Tybee Island and its elegant lighthouse, to the ever-changing marshes of the islands, to the lacey Spanish Moss adorning our beloved Live Oak trees, to the stone statuary of Bonaventure Cemetery and so much more, she captures the light and shadow, the colors and the intricate interaction between nature and structure that so defines Savannah. An array of the springtime bursting blossoms of Azaleas makes you want to reach out and caress the silken petals. The text, by native Savannah writer Karen T. Bartlett, perfectly echoes the beauty of the photographs. Her liquid prose is as beguiling as a bowl of Jasmine honey. Everything about this lush book seems to have been created to live up to the standards of the city, the photographer and the writer. Layout and design reflect the quality of the portraits; the magnificent print job does the same. Savannah: A Photographic Portrait fills the bill for anyone wanting a cocktail table book which clearly reflects the sense of Savannah. No better gift could be found for a resident, a visitor or someone who dreams of visiting.
The B-52's Universe:
The B-52's Universe is a detailed book which looks back at the band formed after a night of partying in Athens, GA in 1976. With its first album the B-52's became widely beloved by baby boomers and their offspring. It's an amusing look back at the last quarter century at these eccentric and often loveable performers.
Divided into three segments, the book covers the band member's biographies, including a complete L.P., singles and CD discography, and chronicles the group's year-by-year history from 1976 to 2002.
The author, who was a fan from his early teens, looks back to the band member's backgrounds, how they met and how they decided over "Exotic Refreshments" to launch their group. They soon exploded on the dance scene with their hit, "Rock Lobster," on their first album and "Roam" and "Love Shack" on their second.
This book, large and comprehensive, is sure please a lot of fans, from groupies to the newly initiated, offering almost everything there is to know about "the tacky little dance band from Georgia."
The Southern Garden
Few, if any, areas of the United States boast so many, magnificent gardens as The South. From the sun-baked semi-tropical flora of Florida and Texas, to the cooler regions of Virginia and Maryland, this voluptuous book covers it all.
Lydia Longshore examines the natural relationships between gardening and cooking, noting how often devoted gardeners become ardently loving cooks, and visa versa. She illustrates how human life itself reflects nature's life, with seeding and planting, growth, pruning, death, all intertwining into the lives of humans and plants. "The pleasures of home life come not through what we acquire and how we display it. Gratification comes rather through the tasks we've accomplished, the environment we've created, the droughts endured."
The book is divided into sections: Formal Gardens, Cottage Gardens, Lawns, hedges and trees, Tropical Gardens, Garden Ornamentation, Water Features, and Designing with Plants. Each section offers a lavish selection of outstanding and inspiring photographs to illustrate her points.
And in each are wonderful tips on how to grow a garden. Companion planting, for instance, which is an ancient tradition of combining, quite logically, plants that like to grow together, mixing vegetables and flowers and greenery and herbs in juxtapositions both visually pleasing and symbiotic for the plants.
She discusses the best roses for the South, and how to combine grass seed species to develop the thickest, most verdant, lawns.
This is a lovely book for the serious gardener, and can also serve as an armchair tour of the great gardens of Southern mansions and plantations as well as of the smaller, organized chaos of cottages and bungalows. -- CS
The Gift of Southern Cooking
If you love fine Southern cooking, or even if you simply love the South, this book is for you. Lewis and Peacock , both long hailed as among the finest chefs, present their recipes with skill and ease; explaining every step of the way to glorious, traditional Southern cuisine. The dishes they prepare are easy, although often far from quick, and turn out spectacular results. From the Fried Green Corn for breakfast, to Blackberry Cobbler for dessert, you just can’t go wrong if you follow their detailed instructions.
So evocative is this book of home and hearth, family and food, that your daydreams will begin to focus on long, lazy weekends spent preparing voluptuous meals for a crowd of adoring family and friends.
Every page of this book bears the unmistakable mark of being written by real hands-on cooks. Scott Peacock has the gift for translating the love and respect they share for good home cooking with such care and precision that you know, even if you’ve never tried them before, that the Skillet Cornbread will turn out perfectly, the Crab Cakes will be "Honestly Good", and the four-tired Lane Cake something spectacular.
Throughout the book are stories of the origins of the dishes in the family traditions of the two chefs, one from Alabama, one from Virginia.. Both, for instance, grew up in families where in summertime, the emphasis was on vegetables, the first fresh-picked treasures of the Southern summer sun. Just reading about their Roasted Beets in Ginger Syrup, Okra Pancakes, Pole Beans Simmered in Pork Stock, is enough to turn even the most die-hard meat and potatoes man to dreaming of Southern vegetarian delights.
Seafood dishes, too, abound in this book, where the authors try to use nothing that has been out of the sea or river for more than a few hours, and turn their catches into works of art like the Fried Soft Shell Crab or the Shad with Shad Roe Stuffing, a Spring delight found only in certain areas of the United States, especially the South. Whether its red snapper or shrimp, oysters or crab or catfish, this culinary duo will lead you along the path to perfection.
The emphasis here is on cooking each dish in its own season, when ingredients are at their peak. The authors gild their lilies with a deft touch, using the herbs and seasonings of the season as well, and marrying them with compatible edibles.
Wonderful complete menus are offered for every season and every occasion. Were I to be restricted to owning only one cookbook for the rest of my life, I do believe this would be the one I would choose. -- CS
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General Non-Fiction |
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Above all, this memoir/autobiography is a story of the conflict between the desire for independence and self-fulfillment and the desire for love and nurture. An autobiography by a woman in her Twenties is by definition a work in progress, a story to which we will not soon know the ending. Some readers are disturbed by this lack of conclusion. Yet it portrays life as many of us know it. People come in to our lives and remain for a decade or two or three, then vanish from our sphere… to what end or conclusion we never know. Kim Sunee’s memory begins at age three, when her mother leaves her, holding a fistful of nuts and seeds for sustenance, in an open market in South Korea. I’ll be back to get you, her mother says. But mother never returns. After three days in the market, the police pick up the child, still clutching a handful of crumbs, and take her to an orphanage. Adopted by a young American couple, Kim and an infant girl they also adopt, head “ home” to New Orleans. As often happens, this good fortune proves a mixed blessing. The adoptive couple both work, so the children are usually left in the care of their paternal grandfather. Kim adores him and the Cajun food he cooks, and spends hours in the kitchen, devouring the exotic scents and tastes and techniques of the cuisine. Once in school, schoolmates mercilessly taunt the girls for their slanted eyes, their strange coloring, for being “different.” A brilliant student who longs to be somewhere, anywhere, different, young Kim gets a scholarship to attend college in Paris, and her adventurous life begins. She loves Paris and quickly masters the language. She also learns to cook French. At the end of her schooling, she is on her own. It is return to New Orleans, or support herself. She ends up in Stockholm, working as a translator, learning the language and the food. Surviving the cold. She meets a dashing, wealthy entrepreneur, Olivier. At 40, he is 20 years her senior, but the two fall in love at first sight. A few months later, she moves back to France to become mistress of his vast home in the hills overlooking Provence. Their life is that of a perfect love in a perfect and sumptuous setting. She meets and loves his 9-year-old daughter, who in turn loves Kim. She meets his friends and associates and all welcome her into their hearts. They travel extensively. Kim is happy. She and Olivier share a deep and idyllic love. Yet she is torn and conflicted between love and her passionate desire to know who she is, where she came from, why she was abandoned…and above all, to find a sense of herself, to find her independence. Throughout the story, this conflict rages between the desire for love and a sense of belonging and the desire to know the roots of self and to achieve independence. Kim Sunee lives in many places, travels extensively, and always keeps a diary of the foods she eats and cooks. Each chapter ends with a recipe symbolizing the crumbs of where she has been, what she has done, who she has been.
Randi Berger, author of “My Recycled Pets: Diary of a Dog Addict,” writes an engrossing story about her obsession with dogs. Berger, founder of Recycled Pets Rescue, an all-volunteer rescue organization which has saved the lives of more than 10,000 dogs and celebrates its 20 year anniversary this year, tells her story from the very beginning. Starting with her childhood, Berger tells the story of the path that led to saving these dogs from certain death. Pulling no punches, she describes an angry child: antisocial, undisciplined, disruptive and sometimes downright malevolent. For many years, the only stabilizing being in her life is her dog, Skippy, a terrier she’d found at a shelter. Her best friend, only confidant, and one true love, his ultimate death years later catapulted Berger into an almost coma-like state of devastation. She had to escape. Born in Encino, California, this oh-so-typical Valley Girl with the lacquered bouffant hair and four inch heels stumbles through countless offshoot paths before finding her own way. A stint in a Rainbow Gathering, filled with naked, pot-smoking hippies, and a later month or so long journey with The Grateful Dead edged her toward the ultimate spiritual path she would take. But it was the dogs, damaged, abused, abandoned, starved and injured beyond repair, who helped her find her way to a firm belief in the Divine Right Order. In “My Recycled Pets,” Berger tells the stories of these dogs, most of whom Berger re-homed to loving new owners; a few of which she kept forever for herself. Some ended up film, movie and advertising stars after coaching and training by Berger. All lived out happy lives. With feet firmly on the path, her anger and antisocial emotions dissipated. Today, a fulfilled and happy woman, she is focused on her mission: to rescue the world, one dog at a time. All proceeds from her book will go to Recycled Pets Rescue.
Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation
We know those familiar faces and names, those men who worked and fought for the liberation of the American colonies and the development of a new nation. George Washington, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams: they stand as American icons, doers of great deeds, and somehow seem more than common mortals. But what about the women who raised, married, and influenced these men?
Founding Mothers probes the lives of those who worked to develop this new nation, not by retelling the stories of battle, but through an exploration of those who worked behind the scenes. Instead of focusing on the men who went to battle, author Cokie Roberts turns to those who stayed at home, working diligently to keep the farms and cottage industries of the young colonies running. Many of the wives of these famous men became businesswomen, developing new crops to export, writing legal documents, and setting up retail businesses. Others became government organizers in their own right, writing letters to each other and discussing issues that needed to be considered in the foundation of the new government. Some spunky women even stepped out of their normal social roles to work to change public policy and opinion.
Personal experiences are also shared through information from these letters. These women speak of the pain of separation during war, the heartbreak of losing children, as well as the joy of reunion with loved ones and the pride of taking charge of their collective destiny. The letters of Deborah Franklin are among the most poignant and sad, and shed a new light on her famous husband, Ben. He leaves Deborah for long periods of time for his diplomatic missions in Europe, and while there meets and moves in with another woman, Margaret Stevenson. Deborah's heartache is evident in her responses to Ben's letters, but she maintains her household, entertaining prominent people and facing down angry mobs protesting the recently passed Stamp Act. Sally, Ben's daughter, is also active, attempting to influence her father's policy-making decisions by keeping him well-informed of the political situation in the colonies.
Cokie Roberts, a political commentator for ABC, has taken mountains of information and organized it into a very readable conversation about the women from before the Revolution to the first presidential elections. This book is an excellent read for those interested in history but frustrated by the usual impersonal, historical approach of most books. Roberts presents this time period in an engaging and personal way, and through stories of common human experiences, brings the lives of these amazing women out of the past and into the present. ©2004, Kelli Nottingham questions? comment? email Kelli
Gentle Artist of the San Gabriel Valley
Three thousand miles and many cultural light-years lie between Southern Georgia and Southern California, and yet, it is probably my childhood in The San Gabriel Valley in Southern California that contributed to my living in Savannah in Southern Georgia. These two areas share many gifts, of breathtakingly beautiful old homes of the 19th and early 20th Century, of collective memories of their founders, of temperate climates and breathtaking scenery, and of the artists and preservationists who keep this heritage alive.
The gentle artist of the San Gabriel Valley was Walter P. Temple, a man whose vast and extended family helped found and build the towns that now fill this once untouched landscape. He is also the man whose work immortalizes the valley that once was.
Walter Temple’s daughter, Josette Laura Temple, has written a book both highly personal and beautifully readable, about her father and her family, his work, and the valley in which she has lived her entire life. This evocative book tells their stories, of Walter’s father, the founder of Temple City, and his forebears on both side of the family who were the First Families of the area, going back to the mid-1800s.
The stories of these families, of the founding fathers and founding mothers who helped create the small towns that gradually became the cities of the Valley, are riveting as are the stories of the founding families of so many of the garden spots of the world. But what makes this book so compelling, makes it one you can hardly bear to put down for hours on end is the beautiful and compelling art work of Walter Temple photographically reproduced with excellence.
Temple began painting in earnest in his Sixties when he realized how much was changing, how much being destroyed in his beloved valley. Only by preserving and recording its beauty, could he keep this place for future generations to understand and appreciate. He began in earnest to record the valley in sketches, watercolors and oils, the result of which has become a lasting tribute to his ancestral home and, although he probably did not anticipate it, to himself.
Temple’s artistry captured this verdant and flowering place as it was in the days before so much was razed in the pursuit of economic progress. While the Temple family tried to protect what it could of the fine architecture of the area, it is Walter’s art works that preserve landscape, architecture, and a bygone lifestyle, much of which will never be seen again.
And finally, the book is Josette Temple’s tribute to a place, a time, and above all a beloved father. No one who reads this book will be disappointed. --CS
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I’ve read a lot of memoirs and autobiographies, nearly always of people whose work or life or both, I’ve greatly admired; and, nearly always I’ve skimmed and jumped through the book, impatient with the inherent egocentricity of the writer.
Not with My Life. I was riveted, mesmerized even, from page 1 to page 953. And no, this is most certainly not because Clinton is lacking the usual egocentricity. He has an abundance of it, as must any man who ultimately becomes the President of the United States.
Thinking now about the book, and re-reading sections and passages, as pleasurable the second time around as the first, I can only conclude that my total absorption comes from the fact that Bill Clinton is a wonderful writer. His writing is clear and concise, and like the finest of novelists, he has a keen eye for the details that bring his work to life. His powerful memory for detail, for names, for sights and sounds and smells and emotions, evokes a powerful portrait of a life fully lived.
The eye for detail is there in the opening lines of the book. “I was born under a clear sky after a violent summer storm.” By book’s end, we know how much that phrase foreshadowed.
The book is written chronologically, beginning with infancy, boyhood, adolescence and college years, and ending with his eight-year presidency. Clinton leaves little out, in any stage of his life or the book. His flaws and foibles, his occasional despondencies, his triumphs and passions, are all there for the world to read.
Clinton has an extraordinary ability to look back and see with precision the people, the events, the situations that shaped him into the man he became, into the decisions he made, for better or worse. He admits his mistakes, examines them, and learns from them. Hopefully, we readers learn something, too, about examining our own lives and learning from our mistakes.
Above all, he is a great storyteller.
The early part of the book could stand alone as a classic Coming of Age story about the development of a boy of uncommon introspection and far-ranging interests, a boy with an uncanny memory for the people he meets, the places he visits, the books he reads, the music he hears. He writes of foibles and triumphs, of a shy and timid boy’s burgeoning interest in girls, of a religious boy’s deepening and strengthening faith and a thinking boy’s increasing dismay at bigotry and narrow mindedness, and growing interest in science and politics.
The story of Bill and Hillary Clinton, which begins in the college years and extends throughout the book, could hold its own as one of the great, timeless love stories.
The early political years, fascinating with anecdotes, might well serve as a primer for any young person hoping to enter public service.
And of course, the eight years of his Presidency, offers some rare and always insightful glimpses into the inside world of the White House, where each decision, sometimes each word, can and often does, reverberate and ripple and effect every aspect of our lives and lives of people around the world. Great triumphs are achieved and tragic mistakes lived through. He writes with startling intimacy and detail, with clarity and honesty.
Throughout it all is the constant of Clinton’s engaging writing style, his sense of history and destiny; his wonderful sense of humor, and his unwavering conviction that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” as Socrates said so long ago.
Making Big Money Investing in Real Estate Foreclosures
In cities like Savannah, where real estate prices have soared in recent years and seem destined to continue to do so, it often appears tempting to the investor to start buying foreclosures. The foreclosing bank simply wants to get their money out of the property, and presumably said property is worth considerably more than the amount of the loan.
These assumptions are usually true. But as many an investor has discovered, the path to profit in foreclosures contains many potholes.
Buying a property at a foreclosure auction, for instance, requires the buyer to produce the full cash amount of the sale within an hour or two of the bang of the auctioneer’s gavel. That can be a significant stumbling block to investors with minimal amounts of cash. Of course, if they have had a long and idyllic relationship with a bank and an impeccable credit rating, then they can usually get a 10 or even 30-day loan to cover the sale, which they then must refinance.
That’s just the first pothole.
Which is why Making Big Money Investing in Foreclosuresis a valuable book for anyone serious about buying these properties. The authors detail the myths and pitfalls of buying foreclosures and give step-by-step instructions on how to do it.
For instance, the ideal time to buy a foreclosure is before it actually becomes one. Owners nearing foreclosure often 'advertise' their plights in a number of ways. They’re short of money, so they neglect upkeep on the property. Overgrown weeds and peeling paint are a green light.
Those beset by a multitude of other bills may simply vacate the place, leaving it empty and untended. Or they may fall behind in their taxes. A divorce also often signals trouble for property owners.
This book will help you find these 'motivated sellers'. Then the authors show you, step-by-step, how to structure your deals so that you can often buy the property with little or no cash down. The authors show you how to negotiate with sellers in trouble, help them out of their predicament, and create a win-win situation for both of you. Most important, they help you avoid costly pitfalls and potholes on the way to creating your own, successful real estate portfolio.
Since it often seems that three out of every five residents of Savannah are either restoring, renovating or simply investing in real estate, this book seems a very appropriate Savannah read.
Despite the use of the word "loopholes" in the title, which seems to imply some slightly sleazy methods of sneaking around the tax laws, this is a straightforward, must have book for anyone contemplating real estate investment of any type. The tax laws carefully explained and detailed in this book are far from "loopholes," but absolutely legal and definitive tax laws. The investor who disregards them has everything to lose.
The authors, in a highly readable, interesting style, also cover almost every aspect of real estate investment, including such often neglected topics as: what kind of business are you really in?; how to analyze a property before you invest in it; how to be a successful landlord; tips for obtaining loans when you show no income on your tax return; how to makes a half million dollars tax free when selling a home; and many others. -- CS
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