The Star series

A true classic about the period, though published a generation later. The covers (not the dust jackets) of the earlier, pre-paperback editions were of mauve cloth as part of the overall point of view. ("Mauve," declared Whistler, "is pink trying to be purple.") Some of these older copies are available from dealers associated with amazon.com. Beer was a wonderful stylist, in temperament something like Ambrose Bierce but more lively, even explosive at times. He was a short story writer who published mainly in The Saturday Evening Post along with William Faulkner, ten years younger, who surely derived part of his own style from Beer's. Faulkner's Introduction to The Modern Library edition of The Sound and the Fury, which consists of a quick description of each of the characters in the story that follows, uses the same form that Beer used in this book, though Beer's characters are historical figures. Beer's first chapter is an essay on the still strong influence of Louisa May Alcott, whom he calls "The Titaness," in the 1890s. It begins, "They laid Jesse James in his grave and Dante Gabriel Rosetti died immediately." This memorable sentence sets the tone for the book. There never has been, perhaps, a more vigorous, a more lively, a more amusing, or a more convincing takedown of Louisa May Alcott and her pernicious influence on the education of women. Surely what Beer has to say can help readers understand the world that produced Kate Chopin and other early feminist writers. "My God, woman, " he quotes a well-known lawyer of the day in a divorce case, "Did you imagine that your husband was one of Jo's Boy's?' Happy reading, if you don't know this book.

"Taxidermy might sound like a topic for dusty academic journals and strange back-street shops. But the way Carl Akeley practiced it at the turn of the 20th century, taxidermy was a thrill ride of a job, full of exotic safaris, brutal killing, and bloody encounters with the very creatures he was trying to preserve." (All Things Considered, De., 2010) This is the life and work of Carl Akeley in his own words. He attempted to preserve the image of an animal world that was perceived to be heading to extinction. Akeley turned the world of nature preservation on it's head by transforming the craft of trophy animal stuffing into the art of museum-grade taxidermy. He then took the image to a further degree by building life-like environments to realistically house or frame his animal subject. In effect, he created a life-like snap frozen in time for a public that would most likely never see these animals or experience the actual scene in real life. To create these incredible dioramas required safaris to Africa for Akeley to personally 'collect' the proper exhibits. Notably, Akeley's safari experiences became the grist of legend. Besides his collecting adventures, he was famous for having to save himself from a leopard attack by strangling the animal with his bare hands when he lost his rifle. He also survived a brutal mauling by an enraged elephant. In the end, the killing of animals for preservation started to weigh heavy on Akeley's conscience. He eventually reasoned that the better method of preservation would be to set aside large tracts of land as animal reservations. Let the animals be free of human intervention to live their lives. His effort was eventually rewarded with the creation of a gorilla preserve in the Congo mountains. To this day, it is accepted that without Akeley's advocacy for the gorilla, there would be no gorillas in our world today. Akeley's amazing dioramas are still on exhibit at Chicago's Field Museum and New York's American Museum of Natural History.

"In this book I have written about some aspects of the war which, I believe, the world must know and remember, not only as a memorial of men's courage in tragic years, but as a warning of what will happen again--surely--if a heritage of evil and of folly is not cut out of the hearts of peoples. Here it is the reality of modern warfare not only as it appears to British soldiers, of whom I can tell, but to soldiers on all the fronts where conditions were the same."