Marvin Gaye, My Brother

Book Description

Marvin Gaye's life and brilliant career were cut tragically short on April 1, 1984 - one day before his 45th birthday - when he was shot and killed by his own father. Now, for the first time ever, Marvin Gaye's story is told in intimate detail by a member of his own family. Frankie and Marvin Gaye were close from childhood until Marvin's death. Frankie was at Marvin's side when he died, and only Frankie heard his deathbed confession. Full of never-before-told personal anecdotes, this book takes you behind the scenes from Marvin's childhood, through his spectacular success at Motown and then Columbia, his stormy relationships with women, and finally to his descent into drugs and despair. The true story of the man behind the beloved music is now available to fans old and new. Includes great photos throughout, a helpful index, and a timeline of important events in Marvin's life.

Customer Reviews:

Better Insight.......2006-11-03

This is the second book I have read about Marvin. This book had far more insight as it was written by his brother. Very good reading for fans of Marvin, Motown or Music.

YOU WILL CRY WHEN YOU READ THIS BOOK! FRANKIE'S POIGNANCY HAD ME MOURNING MARVIN'S DEATH AND HIS DEATH AS WELL, ALL OVER AGAIN........2006-08-30

I've read Divided Soul twice, once when it was first published and again in the late 90's. For me, it was the definitive Marvin Gaye book, until I read Frankie Gaye's book!

Frankie Gaye's book is so compassionate and tender, so factual. After all, he was Marvin's best friend and confidante. Whatever you do, do not skip to the end. Read the entire book and when you get to the ending, you will have gone through Marvin's struggle with him, with Frankie. My only regret about this book is that I never bothered to know more about Frankie Gaye.

The Truth is Not Always What People Want to Read.......2005-11-08

I read this book, and I think that it is an honest book written by Marvin's brother, Frankie. He was someone who was close to him and knew him better than a paid writer. Most people would rather read spicey sensationlism, and juicey gossip written by someone who never really knew Marvin than to read about the not so spicey truth from one of his sibling. Most people get so used to hearing the rumors, and he-say she-say junk until the real truth seems like a rumor. In real life Marvin was a man who was talented, with numerous problems, and he was killed by his father, who also was a complicated man with problems. Sad as it was, that's probably what happened. No deep dark secrets there, his father was just a mentally ill man who killed his son in a fit of anger or rage, just as Frankie's book says. Marvin should not have never been living with his parents in the first place, since he and his father were having so many problems with one another. Marvin should have been somewhere getting his life straightened out.

Not the best read........2005-07-15

I was disappointed in this book. Frankie Gaye did not tell all the facts especially about how Marvin was killed. Why would the police refuse to enter the home and let Marvin lay their bleeding to death? Something about that just does not ring true.

Marvin Gaye fans, take this one lightly.......2004-09-12

I won't reiterate what the other reviewers have said, because they make a great point--the book is light on real information. Much of what Frankie covers is what we already knew about Marvin (drugs, women, mental woes), which leads me to think Frankie didn't know Marvin that well at all.

I was hoping to learn the hardcore, real reason Marvin Sr. shot Marvin. Frankie can only speculate, and since Marvin Sr. is gone, the world will never really have a clear understanding what happened the fateful day that shook the music world. What was appalling then--and still is now--is that Marvin Sr. didn't even get much of a slap on the wrist. The crime is given the almost-justifiable gloss of "Marvin had it coming." Like another reviewer mentions, no one in the family ever sought professional help for Marvin, and if everyone thought the man was such a loose cannon, why didn't they? It's my guess that Marvin Sr. would have blocked that attempt anyway, given that he was such an attention hound, to hear Frankie tell it. Frankie makes it clear that Marvin Sr. caused a significant amount of pain to his own family, through routine unemployment, anger-loaded outbursts, and all-around childishness. I had heard that Marvin and his sibs were abused sexually as children, but not a word of that appears in this book.

The book isn't bad, but I agree with the reviewer who noted that the co-author didn't seem to have a voice within the pages, and I believe that would have made the book much less subjective. Frankie writes as if he is sitting in front of you, just talking about his brother, so the tone and style are very loose and informal. Not a bad book, but I think there are better, more meaty biographies out there. It's my guess that Frankie left a lot of family detail out to spare those still living; maybe he felt that Marvin's very public demons were enough embarrassment.

Side note: Frankie makes mention of Ritz and claims that what information he spewed out isn't reliable and that Marvin only met him one time. I think I'll read that one next...

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Marvin Gaye, My Brother
Frankie; Basten, Fred E. Gaye
Manufacturer: Backbeat Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OM6L4I

Customer Reviews:

Join Jane Austen's character Elizabeth on a Tour.......2007-02-07

If you love Jane Austen, this book will help you gain a deeper understanding of the time she wrote about. In her book PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, how did Elizabeth think of the landscapes of the Peak District, Dovedale, and Pemberley, which she viewed on her tour with the Gardiners? This book will answer those questions and more.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in or studying the work of Jane Austen, Romantic poetry, and landscape painting. It will give you a new insight into the attitudes of the last half of the 18th century.

Average customer rating:

Creating Picturesque America
Sue Rainey
Manufacturer: Applewood Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 1557095345

Book Description

The first comprehensive study of how this remarkable publication reinforced and promoted the way Americans viewed progress, nature, and their own country in the years following the Civil War.

Fort Reno: Or Picturesque "Cheyenne And Arrapahoe Army Life", Before The Opening Of "Oklahoma" (Frontier Classics)

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Fort Reno: Or Picturesque "Cheyenne And Arrapahoe Army Life", Before The Opening Of "Oklahoma" (Frontier Classics)
D. B. Dyer
Manufacturer: Stackpole Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 081173188X

Book Description

Born Ida Casey, the author was the granddaughter of a U.S. congressman and the wife of Indian agent D. B. Dyer. She followed her husband to the Darlington Indian Agency, based near Fort Reno, where she experienced the ups and downs of frontier life and encountered the nearby Native Americans, with whom she made enduring friendships. The book presents the best available picture of agency life in the Indian Territory and is an excellent source on early Oklahoma. A social commentary on late nineteenth century America that provides vivid descriptions of the tribal customs and characteristics of Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians.

American Buildings and Their Architects: Volume 2: Technology and the Picturesque: The Corporate and the Early Gothic Styles (Oxford Paperbacks)

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American Buildings and Their Architects: Volume 2: Technology and the Picturesque: The Corporate and the Early Gothic Styles (Oxford Paperbacks)
William H. Pierson
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0195042174

Book Description

The pre-Civil War architecture of the nineteenth century was marked by the development of two distinct styles: the "corporate," which originated in the chaste, brick buildings of early Boston, and the "early Gothic Revival," which brought new vitality to American religious and domestic architecture. Pierson traces the evolution of these styles in the works of Ithiel Town, Richard Upjohn, James Renwick, A.J. Davis, and Andrew Jackson Downing.

The American in Paris (Heath's picturesque annual for 1843)

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The American in Paris (Heath's picturesque annual for 1843)
Jules Gabriel Janin
Manufacturer: Appleton and Son
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

The American in Paris during the summer: Being a companion to the "Winter in Paris;" or, Heath's picturesque annual for 1844 (Heath's picturesque annual for 1844)

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The American in Paris during the summer: Being a companion to the "Winter in Paris;" or, Heath's picturesque annual for 1844 (Heath's picturesque annual for 1844)
Jules Gabriel Janin
Manufacturer: Appleton and Son
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

The American in Paris: or, Heath's Picturesque Annual for 1843: Illustrated by eighteen engravings, from designs by M. Eugene Lami

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The American in Paris: or, Heath's Picturesque Annual for 1843: Illustrated by eighteen engravings, from designs by M. Eugene Lami
Jules Gabriel Janin
Manufacturer: Adamant Media Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

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Australia & Oceania | History | Historical Reproductions | Formats | Books
ASIN: 1402173415
Release Date: 2005-11-30

Book Description

This Elibron Classics edition is a facsimile reprint of a 1843 edition by Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, London.

American Memory - Being A Mirror Of The Stirring And Picturesque Past Of Americans And The American Nation

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American Memory - Being A Mirror Of The Stirring And Picturesque Past Of Americans And The American Nation
Henry Beston
Manufacturer: Beston Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | World | History | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1406751154

American memory Being a Mirror of the Stirring and Picturesque Past of American and the American Nation

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American memory Being a Mirror of the Stirring and Picturesque Past of American and the American Nation
Henry Beston
Manufacturer: Farrar & Rinehart
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000K74LEY

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American Picturesque
John Conron
Manufacturer: Pennsylvania State University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Modern | Schools, Periods & Styles | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

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Book Description

"Conron has produced an indispensable guide—an `anatomy' in the Renaissance sense, really—to the picturesque in America. Never before have we had so detailed and incisive a consideration of the variety of ways in which this term impinged on American consciousness and influenced a whole range of arts. This is strong scholarship which grows and grows on one until the reader understands that she has before her decades' worth of cogitation on the cultural import of picturesque." —Philip Gura, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

"Majestic in scope and masterful in analysis, this truly interdisciplinary work offers the first serious treatment of the importance of the picturesque as a way of seeing landscape, and of understanding self. Conron's analysis moves deftly between landscape gardens and urban architecture, topographic scenes and literary treatises, making American Picturesque essential reading for all those in history, geography, and cultural studies aspiring to understand how nineteenth-century Americans imagined their land." —Mona Domosh, Dartmouth

"This is American cultural history at its most stimulating. Conron broadly explicates the concept of the picturesque in all of its permutations in American landscape and genre painting, architecture and landscape planning, as well as literature. He combines intelligible articulation of theory with sensitive readings of key paintings and texts. Even familiar works, from Fitz Hugh Lane's Gloucester views to Thoreau's Walden, are revealed afresh, for both the most informed historian and the general reader." —John Wilmerding, Princeton University

"Enlightening, informative and instructive, John Conron's American Picturesque gives historical substance to the pervasive nature of picturesque energies throughout our culture. This book greatly clarifies the art in life, and art as life. Conron vividly brings to light the seeds that grow into what we have come to understand as picturesque. His mining of American history for the emergence, blending, coalescing, and dispersion of the picturesque throughout American life will become a fundamental part of every environmental designer's awareness of his or her professional roots." —Bob Scarfo, Washington State University

American picturesque, as defined by John Conron, is America's first aesthetic, and one that permeated all aspects of American culture in the nineteenth century. Twenty years in the making, this book presents the picturesque aesthetic as the common thread holding together American literature, art, and landscape architecture. Focusing on the peak years of the aesthetic, 1830-1880, Conron describes how the picturesque transformed not only American perception but also American space.

American Picturesque demonstrates the sweeping breadth of the concept and the specific aesthetics of the picturesque in many aspects of nineteenth-century American culture. Conron traces the picturesque theory through landscape, topographical, and genre painting; rural cottages and villas in styles ranging from Gothic and Italian Revival to Queen Anne; a landscape garden (Montgomery Place); a rural cemetery (Mount Auburn); a picturesque suburb (Llewellyn Park); Central Park and urban architecture; and prose narratives by James Fenimore Cooper, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Wilson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and others.

Ultimately, Conron ably defines the elusive idea of the picturesque and proves its influence on nineteenth-century writers and artists in various media. He also shows how the picturesque aesthetic influenced people from all walks of life in the way they observed a painting, a woodland scene, a public park, a house, or even one another. This book will appeal to anyone interested in nineteenth-century American art, literature, or culture in general.

Book Description

Everything the hopeful T.V. journalist needs to know about getting a job in broadcasting.

Customer Reviews:

outdated.......2000-03-28

While the information in here was of some value, I found that other books that I have on this subject are more indepth. The market info was no use because it was very outdated.

Very informative.......1999-07-24

I really enjoyed this book and hope the author(s) come out with something else on related subjects in the future. As someone just starting out in the business, Lynn's observations are very indicative of my experiences, so far. The listing of top media markets around the country with addresses was very helpful.

Book Description

XSL Formatting Objects Developer's Handbook is a syntactical reference and a guide for developing practical solutions using the complete XSL toolkit. In exploring the available tools and architectures, the book allows programmers to understand and apply XSL as practitioners. XSL-FO is a complex specification that provides a framework for describing detailed document formatting characteristics. A primary goal of XML is to separate the data from presentation. Unlike HTML documents, XML documents contain no information about how those documnets will appear when displayed. The XSL-FO specification provides a standardized way to build stylesheets that express document formatting in pure XML notation.

Customer Reviews:

Good introduction to XSL-FO concepts.......2005-03-19

Before I jump into an overview of the book, I wanted to make a quick observation first. I personally can't understand why XSL-FO hasn't caught on as fast as XSLT, XML and its ultra popular variant HTML. XSL-FO is the third spec of the original big three specs provided by the W3C and it was supposed to provide a markup language suited specifically to printing documents. XSL-FO is to the printed page what HTML is to the browser.

This is one of three books currently available on the XSL-FO topic, and I am shocked at the lack of availability of good books on the topic. This is the first book I read on XSL-FO and I have to say it does a good job of introducing the language and it's concepts. It is a semi good reference book. However, the code samples I think are just horrible. There is not a single examples where you have simple straight XSL-FO. All code examples are FO interlined with XSLT, making the syntax confusing and almost unreadable. You have to sift through 2 pages of XSLT before you get to one XSL-FO element. I think part of the slow acceptance of the language has to do with the fact that all books on the topic present code that mixes FO and XSLT. You can write straight workable XSL-FO that is much easier to debug and understand, than the code presented in this book.

Also the renderer software that was recommended in the book are the oldest guys on the market, but definitely not the best. Antenna House is the big dog and they have an excellent renderer (they are very expensive though). Some of the other renderers mentioned in the book are just terrible. If you want a list of good renderes search online. On the Windows platform, in my opinion, the best two renders for high volume operations on the market are Antenna House and the Ibex PDF Creator (from xmlpdf.com)

A good book that gives XSL-FO only code samples is the Ken Holman "Definitive XSL-FO" book. That book is a more advanced book however, and is only good if you already understand the language. It is also a semi-good reference book. To a novice, that book will be a bit over the top and probably very confusing. The other good book on the market is the O'Reilly book. Of the three, it is the best reference book by far.

So to recap, if you are venturing into XSL-FO, buy Doug Lovell's book in the beginning. Then buy the Dave Pawson book for reference. And finally when you get some mileage under your belt, get the Ken Holman book for the more advanced concepts and topics.

Good code but good formatters are hard to find.......2002-11-18

I rated the book 4 stars because it provides solid examples in many areas of XSL FO that actually work. Even though the W3C recommendation has been out since October, 2001, we have just started to see accessible books on XSL FO, and this is the best. The author provides a hands-on view and gives you examples that work and get you up and going quickly. Not a lot of wading through esoterica wondering how you would even get started with a simple document.

However, that is not to say that the book is without problems. Let me list them in order:

1. Software that will format XSL FO is in its infancy. Therefore, although the examples work, you have to burn some shoe leather finding software that is compliant with the spec. It would have been better if the author had bundled an evaluation copy of either the Antenna House software which he claimed would format *almost* all of the examples or his own XFC software that he developed for IBM alphaworks. I did download the XFC software, but although written in Java, it is very much oriented towards a windows platform, and I could not concoct a way to get it to run on my linux machine (I gave up after discovering I had a non-compliant version of the xerces package). I think one of the reasons Michael Kay's Wrox XSLT book has been so popular has been because of his work on Saxon. Software would have made this book a 5 star book.

2. Downloadable examples. These were not available at first, but the author had them up within a week of my email, correcting an error on the publisher's web page. So, this went from a problem to a plus.

3. Pagination (Chapter 8) is not very clear. Some of the figure references seem to have been reversed (generally, in many places where the author refers to figure 8.1 you should read 8.2 and vice versa). This chapter needed a concrete example to start. Then the author could have gotten into the more esoteric issue of overlapping regions.

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