Book Description
A stunning gift book and indispensable collector's item, now available in paperback.
He was just twenty-nine years old and had beena recording artist for less than six years when he died on New Year's Day 1953. Yet the songs Hank Williams left behind-including "I Saw the Light," "Cold Cold Heart," "Your Cheatin' Heart"-transformed him into a legend whose influence is felt as strongly today as ever. But for all that Hank Williams's music seems to reveal, his fans have been given remarkably little of the man himself. Now Colin Escott and Kira Florita present a previously undiscovered wealth of private family snapshots, letters, unpublished interviews, and other ephemera-including his final lyric, found in the backseat of the car where he died. Most extraordinary, though, are the previously unseen handwritten lyrics-almost thirty songs altogether. In paperback for the first time, this is a windfall of memorabilia for his fans everywhere.
Customer Reviews:
Jett's Father & His Turbulent Short Life........2005-09-24
This is an adequate pictorial biography composed by Colin Escott And Kira Florita of Hiram (Hank) Williams, though he had left very little written context besides his songs. He was thirteen when his family moved to Montgomery, Alabama. When he was fifteen, he was tall and had a grown-man's voice. He was basically uneducated as his handwritten letters to his mother show. The teenage Hank wore glasses. His mother, Lillie, went along on some of his early performances. Her domestic life was troubled.
Hank and Audrey were happy in 1944 when they were in their twenties. But his mother intruded as she and Audrey did not get along. They divorced in May, 1948, but reconciled and Hank, Jr. was born exactly one year later. In Nashville, they had a fancy house on Franklin Road (which I used to drive by in the Seventies) during the time he appeared on the Grand Ole Opry.
The 'Hillbilly Hit Parade' of 1947 showed Eddy Arnold had two in the Top 10, "I'll Hold You in My Heart" and "It's a Sin." Jo Stafford, a pop singer had a duet of 'Timtayshun' at #6; she later recorded Hank's song, "Jambalaya." His song "Move It On Over" was recorded first by Cowboy Copus and was in the #2 spot. In 1947-48, he appeared on WLAC in Nashville; Bob Lobertini were there in various capacities fifteen years later. He sang on "Hillbilly Jamboree" on WCKY in Cincinnati, Nick Clooney's station. I miss him still.
Hank could mesmerize an audience with his personality and the way he sang. He had a spine operation at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville in December, 1951 -- a year before his death, requiring stronger and stronger pain medicines to enable him to perform.
In January, 1952, they divorced again and he took up with Bobbie Lett, a former dancer but working as a secretary when she gets pregnant with his child. She'd been a pretty girl, but was very sedate when he met her there in Nashville. She'd previously been married to Monte Hale of cowboy movie fame out in California.
In June of that year, he married his second wife, Billie Jean, from Shreveport, Louisiana. He was back where he started at the 'Louisiana Hayride' from September to December), but this time he was the star attraction. He was not my type of singer but I did like his "Kawliga, the wooden Indian" song.
"Lost Highway" is just one of the enormous amount of songs he recorded. You can find a discography of all of his records in the book, SING A SAD SONG by Roger M. Williams and Bob Pinson. A good accompaniment to these two are Bill Koon's SO LONESOME.
Hank didn't really have time to be lonesome, as the pictures show he always had many people around him and many who cared. He was only twenty-nine, same age as Justin, when he died. God Bless Him.
silent eloquence in photos of a hard life.......2005-08-12
very well edited and prepared. The photos say a lot. I thought there might be a bit more text, but that is probably for another Colin Escott book and I plan to buy it as well
Hank Williams " THE " Country & Western Legend.......2003-10-14
I have been an avid C&W fan since the late 40's;and although I have admired the many other great stars throughout the years ,none better defined this music than the the way Hank did. He did it all ,and in a large degree,by himself. In any area ,be it: songwriting,costumes,variety,gospel,heartbreak,lonlieness,love,inovation,tours,fighting the establishnent,personal life,longevity,an interresting personality,pop ularity,humility,you name it, he excelled and was the one who set the standard for the other stars to follow.I am sure most of them would agree.
If my memory serves me well ,Hank had several songs on the top 10 a year after his death; and we still see books like these coming out 50 years after his death. One can only imagine what he would have produced if he had lived a normal lifespan.
This book is excellent in every respect and also a great companion to Escott's other equally fine effort Hank Williams S - The Biography.If my memory serves me correctly,Hank had several songs in thev top 10 a year after his death and book of this quality still coming out 50 years after his death.
Thorough Portrait Of A Music Great.......2002-05-21
In assembling 1998's 10-CD The Complete Hank Williams, Kira Florita and Colin Escott found far more material than their box set's book could contain. As a result, they put together this book, a behind-the-scenes look to hold his devotees spell-bound.
Fans who've read Escott's biography Hank Williams will treasure the new material: an extensive collection of informal photos, long-sealed court depositions, the accounting ledger with the $30,000 payoff to his naïve teenaged bride Billie Jean to abandon her claim to his estate, etc.
Among the handwritten copies of 30 unpublished songs and song fragments ("I Wish I Had A Dad," "The Broken Marriage") is "Then Came That Fatal Day" found on the floor of the Cadillac where he died en route to a December 31, 1952, concert. The newly revealed lyrics capture his love-hate relationship with his first wife, Audrey. Meanwhile, a draft of "Cold Cold Heart" accompanies Hank's and Audrey's conflicting accounts as to whether it was "inspired" by an abortion.
Numerous details emerge in the book, like Billie Jean's humor, and Hank's problems with excess measures in song lines. Letters from his publisher/co-author/editor Fred Rose (a recovered alcoholic who tried to curb Hank's substance abuse) find Rose trying to help the volatile marriage to Audrey while - like many others - harshly assessing her.
Audrey, who died in 1975, was an ambitious woman who attempted plenty of spin on her exhusband's legend, but she was probably right in saying, "If some woman, equally as strong as I am, had not come along, there never would have been a Hank Williams. He did not want to live when I met him."
It's an intriguing cast of characters, which build upon the already colorful Hank Williams legend. Check it out today!
Hank's Hidden Treasures!.......2001-10-18
If it was 25 pages longer, I would have given "Snapshots" five stars! It's a wonderful treasure trove of fascinating, previously unseen photos, interviews, first person narratives and long-lost song lyrics. If you're a Hank Williams fan, you know what an impressive researcher is Colin Escott. His earlier bio of Hank stands as the most complete picture we're likely to have of a singer who, almost without fail, gave complete heart and soul in the recording studio. Finally, we have a book that attempts far more than a grim post-mortem on Hank's well-documented personal miseries. This is a celebration of Hank Williams: musician and performer. Wait until you see all the incredible photos of Hank and the Drifting Cowboys on stage, playing to excited, packed houses in places as far flung as San Jose and Ottawa. By all accounts, Hank was the most charismatic live performer of his time. Many of the hand-written scraps of unpublished song lyrics are very moving, especially "I Wish I Had A Dad." If only Hank had been given enough time to put the words to music and record them, his string of classic hits would have, without doubt, continued. I am not a starry-eyed admirer. I realize that Hank was abusive to his wives, often cruel and secretive. (By the way, photos here show what a teenaged knock-out was Hank's second wife, Billie Jean.) The "hillbilly Shakespeare" lived most of his brief adult life as a tortured, late-stage alcoholic. But "Snapshots" takes care to balance the picture, too. It depicts Hank Williams as millions of record-buying fans saw him: an enomorously gifted singer/songwriter and electrifying showman. I hope that Colin Escott and Kira Florita keep searching for hidden treasures: "More Snapshots From The Lost Highway" would be welcomed by this reader! Also needed is a single volume that details (as much as possible) all of Hank's live perfomances, TV and radio appearances, such as Mark Lewisohn's "Complete Beatles Chronicle" and the book on Elvis' live perfomances, "King On The Road." Please buy "Hank Williams: The Original Singles Collection...Plus" (CD), Escott's biography and "Snapshots From The Lost Highway." Escott and Florita are "settin' the woods on fire"!
Customer Reviews:
Analysis of Pop Culture with Mostly Accessible Essays.......2006-02-19
Signs of Life focuses on the way we are shaped by the media and advertising with nine chapters that cover "Consuming Passions," "The Signs of Advertising," "Video Dreams," "The Culture of American Film," "Culture and Contradiction in the U.S.A.," "Gender Codes," "Constructing Race," "Popular Spaces," and "American Icons." Many of the essayists, like David Brooks, Thomas Friedman, Thomas Frank, Eric Schlosser, Franine Prose, Gregg Easterbrook, Malcolm Gladwell, and Michael Eric Dyson are best-selling authors whose essays or book excerpts are published in popular magazines. Signs of Life is well served by these writers who, unlike some of the lesser known writers, don't indulge in heavy didactic, academic prose. Some might not like the book for giving too much space to overly didactic writers. For example, there is Fred Davis' essay about the cultural signs and contradictions of blue jeans, which is so steeped in academic speak and is so absorbed by its tiny topic that it seems a pardoy of scholarly writing. Read for example: "Paralleling the de-democratization of the jean, by the 1970s strong currents toward is eroticization were also evident." Or "Of all of the modifications wrought upon it, the phenomenon of designer jeans speaks most directly to the garment's encoding of status ambivalences. The very act of affixing a well-known designer's label . . . to the back side of a pair of jeans has to be interpreted . . . along Veblenian lines, as an instance of conspicuous consumption; in effect, a muting of the underlying rough-hewn proletarian connotation of the garment throug the introduction of a prominent status marker." This is tough going, especially freshmen college students who are not familiar with this type of heavy-handed writing. This essay selection should be further criticized because I don't think students should be encouraged to believe that Fred Davis' heavy-handed writing style represents a worthy model.
In spite of some of the book's excesses, teachers and students alike should appreciate Signs of Life for three reasons: 1) Integrating the aforementioned popular authors into the chapters about popular culture, 2) Providing excellent essay assignments at the end of each essay under the heading "Reading the Signs." With a half dozen strong essay options per essay, the students have over 50 assignment options for chapter. 3) The introduction has three excellent model essays that show the students how to write A-level expositions. The models are based on "The Personal Experience Essay," "Critical Reading of a Film," and "The Open-Ended Analytic Assignment." Each model shows how to integrate outside quotes, paraphrases, and summary into the writer's own voice and how to document outside sources in the text and at the end of the manuscript with an MLA style "Works Cited" page.
It appears that Signs of Life Fifth Edition is moving away from the academic lucubrations of scholarly authors and embracing more accessible writers, like those previously mentioned. This is a positive evolution for the fifth edition and hopefully points to less overly-done academic writing in future editions.
What the media is up to...........2005-09-22
There is a statement that is familiar amongst our society, especially those of us that are more liberal, and that is "to not always trust what the media offers as valid or true." This textbook is an attempt to characterize the ways that media manipulate or tangle the truth, and even goes as far as offering an explanation as to why they do it. Now this is where objectivity within a learning text can be lost because to offer opinion about why the media does such things is treacherously difficult to do without biasing a left or right view. Yet the book does offer many illuminating details about the workings of this incredibly powerful economic and political tool, and more importantly, it offers the reader tools for combating or deciphering the clouded messages it gives.
I believe that this is a book that must be read by every human being (not to mention our pets who more and more become economic targets) so as to arm himself or herself against the incessant onslaught of "buy me! Buy me!" and "I can make you better because God knows you weren't made right!" However, the book loses power in being a textbook because some fluidity is lost, and it can be at times rather bland.
Nonetheless, it is a great tool to have and a tool that has now more recently become important to the human in his newest, superficial society.
Average customer rating:
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Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers with Other
Sonia Maasik , and
Jack Solomon
Manufacturer: Bedford books
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- Good puzzles to grind your logic skills to a fine point
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New Puzzles in Logical Deduction
George J. Summers
Manufacturer: Dover Pubns
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Mathematical Brain Benders
ASIN: 0486220893 |
Customer Reviews:
Good puzzles to grind your logic skills to a fine point.......2001-02-12
Most logical puzzles are developed using a very old formula. However, that does not diminish their appeal. Logical deduction is a skill that should be used more in the world, as many errors would be prevented if more people would simply consider a few more of the circumstances before acting. These puzzles will certainly help you hone those skills to a finer edge.
The level of difficulty starts at a pretty low level, with some of the problems being solvable by a short inspection. However, that changes towards the end and I found myself really scratching my head trying to find a loophole through the instructions that could lead to a solution. Hints to the problems are given at the bottom of the page and they are inverted to prevent an easy peek. Complete solutions to all problems are given at the end of the book.
I found this a good book of problems to challenge me into thinking about the possible values and what the possible consequences of the parameters of the problem could mean. I recommend it to anyone interested in problems in logical deduction.
Amazon.com
It's easy to be suspicious of a book about how to use search engines. After all, search engines are designed to be simple to use: You just type in your keywords and go. Web Search Garage takes over at the far end of what is obvious, where author Tara Calishain explains how to use little-known search engines (particularly specialized ones) and unadvertised features of more famous search tools (mainly Google and Yahoo). She also describes some clever hacks that are engine independent, such as the fact that U.S. states have official URLs ending with their postal abbreviation and .us, as in .wa.us for the state of Washington. You can narrow searches usefully with that bit of knowledge. To cite another example, you can use the idea of combining Google's wildcard capability with its exact-match search capability in queries like, "there are * types of horse" to yield reasonable-sized lists of useful hits.
The hints and ideas are thick in this modest-sized book, and they're consistently outside the realm of what most of us would figure out for ourselves. In browsing this book, you'll issue mental "Ah!" exclamations fairly frequently, and you'll find yourself motivated to store Web Search Garage near the place where you do most of your browsing. After it first saves you some time, you'll be reaching for it frequently to get its advice. --David Wall
Topics covered: How to find the Web pages and information you want using Google, Yahoo, and other online search resources. Search syntax, keyword selection, and little-known features of search engines all get attention.
Book Description
Enter your Web Search Garage where you learn how to look, what to use to find magic find it faster with less junk, less hassle even figure out what it means (or doesn't).
Where you find the answers
Where you learn how to ask the questions
Your mentor, teacher, Web search magician: Tara Calishain author of Google Hacks, host of ResearchBuzz.com can help you find anything that exists (and some things that don't) including lost buddies, buried ancestors sounds and pictures, great deals, honest advice, intriguing quackery, term paper research, news you can use, jobs and love (maybe both at once)
Browse it, take it home,
Enter the Garage
Come out, a master
Customer Reviews:
Didn't Make Me A Better Web Searcher.......2005-10-09
I bought this book reading the reviews on Amazon.com. When I got it, I was sorely disappointed. The author has a bit of an arrogance about her which comes through in the pages, which is fine, but then the book doesn't teach any good tricks...so the arrogance becomes a little annoying. To be honest, I thumbed through it four times after receiving it from Amazon and I didn't find any good info it (i.e. nothing about it really grabbed me) and I haven't looked at it since - so take my review for whats it worth. Ultimately, It did not help me in my goal: to be a better web searcher. My advice is to just look online for web search tricks. You'll find specifically what you are looking for and it will be free. The author promises a lot - but does not deliver.
More about searching the web from a good author.......2004-11-26
As someone who lives on the wrong side of the world from the best sources of information and shopping I seem to spend a large amount of time online, and a large part of that in a search engine. Web Search Garage promises to let me `Find it faster with less junk, less hassle.'
For experienced net researchers and the search-engine savvy among us, the book may well not live up to the promise, though for a large number of `net users out there it may be just the thing. Where Calishain's previous book, Google Hacks, covered one search engine in great depth in a fairly technical way, this book covers the entire topic of web research in a more friendly manner and language, leaving out the more technical topics of APIs and programming interfaces to spend more time covering advanced search syntaxes and off-the-beaten path search engines and directories.
Calishain has for quite a while written well-researched, informative articles on search engines and research for her weekly newsletter and website ResearchBuzz and the time she has spent on the topic and writing experience have informed this volume. She starts out with the absolute basics, the difference between a search engine (Google) and a searchable subject index (Yahoo) before going on to cover how to get the best out of each.
The book also covers a wide range of search related topics such as finding jobs, local information, multimedia or information about people and Genealogy. Almanacs, dictionaries and encyclopedia get covered. It's hard to think of something missing. Calishain has also taken a great deal of care with her topics. In the section on searching for drugs and medical information, for example, she stresses checking the reliability of your sources.
If you visit Calishain's site for the book at Web Search Garage (which redirects to the book's page at her ResearchBuzz site) there is a link to the table of contents and an example chapter. She also has two `freebie' articles, `Four Things Yahoo Can Do that Google Can't' and `Seven Ways to Save Time Searching' that are further good examples of her writing and the usefulness of the content. She also has an offer for a free six-month subscription to ResearchBuzzExtra, her paid extension to ResearchBuzz.
This volume has gone for breadth instead of depth. That, and the low starting point should make it an ideal beginners book. Since I had on hand my daughter Jessica (a slightly tech-savvy twelve-year-old with a brand-new broadband connection), I lent her my copy of the book. The response:
"This book is absolutely fantastic and I love it to death! I loved how Tara writes about Google and Yahoo and also about smaller search engines. By reading this book you find out how to find the exact information that you want. Also there are many websites in this book that are very helpful. To make the most of them I wrote them down then later checked them out on the internet. There are heaps of helpful sites for kids and heaps for all ages. Sites for fun and sites for information. I love that it is written as if Tara is talking to you and you are just reading instead of listening. It's a really cool book but if you are going to read it you need to know a little about searching the internet first. A really great book."
Jessica is correct about the language. Tara has written in a light, conversational style that lends itself to quick reading. At the same time either the writing or the editing has been quite tight, the information is packed in. This is a book that needs, indeed deserves, a second read.
The perfect book for the average web user who wants to improve his research skills. I'd put this one in the Christmas stocking for all those people who are getting a new computer or a new broadband connection. That's not to say that the more technical savvy will find nothing in this book, so if you give a copy to someone, either read it first or borrow it back -- you may find it worth enough to get your own copy.
Clean Out Your Google Garage.......2004-11-13
Feeling Googled out with nowhere to turn? Open to page one of Tara Calishan's Web Search Garage and you will breath a sigh of relief. This book exposes a world of resources beyond Google and within it. Calishan breaks down search engines and browsers into categories and explains when and how to use them.
If you're tech-savy, you'll follow several of the more complicated sections such as "optimizing your browser for security." But even if you lean to pen and paper like me, Web Search Garage will teach you shortcuts to finding what you're looking for on the Internet.
The Elements, Principles and Examples of Web Searching.......2004-11-05
How many of us browse and search the web for living? Tara Calishain does, and has been doing this for ten years now. Then, it should come as no surprise that she is able, in this fine new book, to summarize the web searching wisdom she has gathered over the years and conceptualize something that by its nature goes against simple hierarchies.
The book covers...
Part I: The Elements of Web Searching:
- search engines
- directories
- toolbars and other browser gadgets
Part II: The Principles of Web Searching (I found this to be a very refreshing view on the subject -- combining the abstract with the examples):
- the principle of unique language (how the language of the query influences the results)
- the principle of the reinvented wheel (communities, usenet, etc.)
- the principle of onions (imaging pealing those layers and finding deeper and deeper information)
- the principle of nicknames (my last name changed since I got married; guess what, so did the results when searching for those name variations)
- the principle of every scrap (how to refine your searches based on the previous results)
- the principles of mass similar (extending the name searches into the branding world)
- the principle of the world beyond (bringing in the experts)
- the principle of the expanding web (as if you didn't know the universe and its projection on the web is ever expanding)
- the principle of applied power (special syntaxes for the major search engines and the precision they bring)
- the principle of salt grains (whom can you trust on the web?)
I am not sure I would have named those principles the way they are in the book but I trust Tara and her editor had a reason to pick those chapter titles.
Next comes Part III: Searching The Web with a special focus on news searching, job searching and local search. Tara takes your hand and leads you to places you (or at least I) never knew they existed on the web.
Part IV, Searching for Multimedia (images and augio, what about video?), Part V: Searching for People (including genealogy research online), Part VI: Consumer Searching (product information with special emphasis on drugs and medical information and kid-safe searching), all round up a very thorough book with more helpful tips than you can absorb for days.
Last but not least, a book focussed almost entirely on non-geeks offers a chapter on "technical support", and concludes with international information search. I would love to see this last topic expanded into a book of its own, and maybe one day such a project will see the light. For now, let's be grateful to Tara Calishain and Eben Hewitt, the Garage series editor at Prentice Hall PTR, for taking a pragmatic approach to knowledge sharing and bringing a needed book by a thoughtful author to an eager audience.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to expand their understanding and use of the vast ocean of knowledge called the World Wide Web.
Web Search Garage.......2004-10-09
No matter what your level of Internet experience, this book will teach you something. The Google section alone contains many gems but the book goes on to describe several other search engines, some obscure and some well kwnown. The author also covers browsers, plug-ins and many other topics not traditionally covered in search engine books. "Web Search Garage" is written in a very friendly and easy to read style that doesn't get bogged down undefined terminology and every step is explained clearly.
This book basically has something for everyone and I promise you won't read this book without learning something new.
Average customer rating:
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Web Search Garage
Tara Calishain
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall PTR
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Online Searching
| Internet
| Home Computing
| Computers & Internet
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: B000OIRXOY |
Average customer rating:
|
Web Search Garage
Tara Calishain
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall PTR
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Online Searching
| Internet
| Home Computing
| Computers & Internet
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: B000N71WAM |
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