Product Description
This major novel by a writer who counted Ernest Hemingway among her fans tracks the rise of Christopher Bennett from humble beginnings to affluence as the manager of a steel company. Dazzled by country club living and women willing to do anything to stay on top, Bennett eventually is compelled by forces larger than himself to reconsider his values - and his world. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

From nearly 70 years later...
This novel, set before and into the Depression, covers Christopher Bennett's rise and fall as an executive in the Balding Company of Aviland, the midwestern city he and Joy have inhabited after leaving the farm back in Bennettsville. Also in Aviland from Bennettville is Madeleine Greaves, who completes a love triangle. Madeleine, the one clear-seeing character, is the most tragic, for Chris rises and falls in a fog, barely sensing the truths of his situation.He is a "natural" leader, not given to clear reflection.

As a novel of business, The Story of a Country Boy rejects any
easy Marxian analysis. Chris is deluded about being one of the
workers, but the workers aren't magnanimous or heroic. The bitter
process-server who becomes a radical street speaker says it all:
he's an unpleasant, ungenerous, vindictive creature.

I admired the slowness of the pacing, the way Powell lets big
changes occur so gradually that the characters are caught by
surprise.But can a man in a such a fog really rise to corporate
power? And can a clear-thinking, self-knowing woman really become
overwhelmingly enamored of such a man?

Powell's sentences are deft:
Yes, the dining room as Tannahill had said was a
really charming little room with its blue walls and
Wedgwood medallions, its little ivory balconies filled
with flowers, its softly lit tables, its hush so
compelling that, defiant as she already felt, it was
impossible for her to raise her voice above a whisper.
(54 words). There were only four other diners as they
entered, a gaunt old gentleman with a Van Dyke and
monocle with his elaborately décolleté, jaundiced wife;
she sat, hands folded, her broken bitter face caught to
her body with a rhinestone and velvet neck ribbon, her
sagging bones somehow organized for the evening under a
green brocade gown. (57 words) pp.241-242.

There's wit, too, as in the sentence that follows the two above:

The couple, created out of much-labeled steamer trunks
and exuding a faint aura of camphor balls, gloomily
permitted bouillon to enter into their chill esophageal
caverns and did not speak to each other, having
finished their conversation at least twenty years
ago.(43 words)

Finishing reading this novel, I wanted to discuss it with some
other reader. I went to the Web and found nothing beyond
publishers' blurbs and directives to my edition's own forward by
Powell biographer Tim Page. What did this book mean in its day?
What were the issues that Powell felt showed the keen edge of her
thought? At the distance of nearly 70 years, I want to see the
work as an examination of human nature, of "love," of limitation.
"Only intelligent women get their lives in such messes,"
Madeleine considers at the end. "They get too smart for their own
feelings, they try to control them and perhaps that's why they're
so miserable in love. . .or they want their self-respect and love
both, or security with love, and love doesn't go with anything
but agony and jealousy and humiliation and pain" (299).
In the end Joy, the wife, misses her bottle of Dom;
Madeleine, alone now, sees what everything's cost and who has
paid; and Chris, back at the family farm, clueless given his
Teflon heart, faces the Bennetsville night "free and incredibly
happy." ... Read more

Product Description
Continuing the re-release of the late Dawn Powell's acclaimed fiction, this is the story of an engagingly amoral hero who desires to replace his real father with an imagined one. Using his mother's diaries, he seeks the off-beat artist or writer whose youthful indiscretion he believes he might have been--in the process coming to grips with his parentage and himself. Originally published in 1962. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Powell's Last Novel
Powell continues an examination of her Manhattan circle that reached its zenith in 1948's astutely charactered, insightful satire *The Locusts Have No King,* was broadened to farce in 1954's *Wicked Pavilion,* and in 1962 broadened further to lampoon in *The Golden Spur.*Her novels became progressively faster-paced, less nuanced, shorter, and less keenly psychological as she moved through substantial chronic illnesses that finally claimed her life a couple of years after *Spur* was published.Her compromised health shows in the comedic breakneck pace of this last book and her comedy was less lancet than affectionate mockery by this point.Although not in the glow of health while writing this, Powell was able to josh with characters inspired by the antics of her Hemingway-Guggenheim-Kline peers, her objective in this novel to portray the self-delusions that were now not so maddening but rather so very comical.

Meet artists, writers, and low-lifes - and guess which is which
Powell's last novel takes a delightfully satiric look at the artistic life in Greenwich Village during the mid-twentieth century.Jonathan Jamison makes a lot of new friends when he comes to New York hoping to determine the identity of his biological father.Will he make as big a splash as his mother did during her brief sojourn?It certainly looks like it, seeing how quick everyone is to help him out.But do they really care about this handsome, but rather clueless young mid-Westerner, or are they only using him for their own purposes?Either way, you can be sure that everything will work out all right in the end.

The plot has a wispy, meandering quality to it, perhaps to reflect how Jamison doesn't seem to have any clear-cut plan of what he's doing when he comes to the big city, and so few of the other characters are ever sober enough to do more than react as situations arise.But the marvelous portraits of the various personalities found in that time and place make this book more than worthwhile all by themselves.Not surprisingly, the women are particularly well-drawn.And while there's not a lot character development, we do get to meet wonderfully comic examples of the various types who frequent the artsy/dive bar that gives this volume its name.Between the has-beens, the woulda-beens, the success stories, and the hangers-on (and how thin the lines between these categories really are) Powell makes this little subculture come alive with artistic verve.Tame enough for young people (but not children) this is a must for those who are considering making a career of the artistic life.

Hmm..........
I've edited a number of Powell's books -- and this is one of her best (although not quite on a level with "Turn, Magic Wheel," "A Time To Be Born," or "Come Back To Sorrento.")

I did find it a little amusing to read the review of my supposed "introduction" to this edition, and to find it called"vague" and "anemic."It's actually much worse than that -- as I wrote no introduction to "The Golden Spur" whatsoever!

Note to budding critics -- it's always a good idea to read a book before printing a review.

A Peek Behind The Pipe Dreams, Darkly
Fine, funny literary satire of "bohemian" New York centered around Greenwich Village. This is Dawn Powell's last novel, published in 1962. Like The Fool in "King Lear," Dawn Powell punctures the absurd self-deceptions of numerous tinpot Lears (to the reader's vast delight). I found the writing wonderful, the wit fantastic and relentless; there are great lines on every page.

Here is a vast canvas of eagre "real" New Yorkers, fresh from the provinces (small town, or boring suburb), people who want to to shed their past, to hide their ignorance and laugh at the squares (not them! of course): people who "want to be what everyone else wanted them to be" in Manhattan.

Powell is excellent at looking behind peoples' pipe dreams. You'll recognize people and types you've encountered in real life as you read this book. You'll see their dreams, and you'll see the reality they hide from. Here's the person, "with her refined Carolina accent, which she kept up like her grandfather's shotgun;" here's the young lady dimpled with pride at "the generous picnic of her decolletage." And here are the "old has-beens, needling me for making it when they never could with their genius." The tone is perfect throughout; I was not surprised to read that Powell's favourite writers included Aristophanes and Petronius, two of the greatest satirists in history. She fits write into that tradition. The only negative thing to say about this book is that the types it describes will not appreciate it. But the detached reader, of even mild self-confidence, and a love of the Roman greats, Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Bellow and Vidal - a love of Truth over Cant - will enjoy Dawn Powell enormously.

In the end the book is a vast panorama of the New York of the 60's (and today), wonderfully evocative of the pull that city can have on all types of people, and beautifully descriptive of the reality of a decision to move there, for so many.

This Steerforth edition of *The Golden Spur* was brought out by Tim Page, who has seen many Powell books back into print. Good of him; but his introductions to her work (*The Happy Isle*,her *Diaries*, and in his biography of her) I found anemic and vague; he seems to have difficulty coming to grips with Powell's great powers as a satirist , is shy of its implications and tries to turn Powell into a much more sentimental writer than, as a clear-eyed realist, she is. I recommend Gore Vidal's 1987 essay (its in his collection "United States") which has a lot of information about Powell and gets (I think) the experience of reading Powell exactly right.

Try Powell's "Happy Island," The Wicked Pavillion," and, indeed, all her New York novels if you like this one.

A Rediscovered American Writer
One of the joys of reading is the opportunity of finding for oneself authors that have long been obscure or overlooked. I came to Dawn Powell's work with expectations of such a reward. I knew that the Library of America had saw fit to publish two volumes of her work and that Tim Page, Washington Post classical music critic, had edited the volumes and written a biography. I was eager to learn more.

Dawn Powell grew up in rural Ohio and moved to Greenwich Village as a young woman and lived a bohemian life. She wrote 15 novels between the 1930s and the early 1960s mostly set in rurual Ohio and Greenwich Village, which were little noted during her life. She has been "rediscovered" and praised highly by some.

Dawn Powell's "The Golden Spur" was her last novel and the first book of hers I read. The book tells the story of Jonathan Jamison who, at the age of 26 leaves his Ohio home in search of his father in Greenwich Village. Jonathan's mother had worked as a typist briefly in the Village before she returned home and married what she found a rather conventional man. She delivered prematurely and told Jonathan that his true father was in New York. And Jonathan goes to search for his father --- and himself.

The book centers around The Golden Spur, a bar in Greenwich Village frequented by artists and literary types. (It had been frequented by Jonathan's mother in her New York days). We meet a cast of characters who become involved with Jonathan, including Hugow, the bohemian modern painter of questionable talent, a succession of Hugow's former lovers, some of whom are bedded by Johnathan, failed literary critics, academics, has-beens and never wases. We also meet an elderly woman named Claire Van Orphen, the writer for whom Johnathan's mother worked briefly. She befriends Johnathan and is instrumental in his search.

I couldn't recommend reading this book for the story-line. It is muddled and hard to follow at times. Nevertheless, I came away from the book thinking that my search to discover a new author had been rewarded.

This book is written in a beautiful clear prose. Each line tells and each word is in place. It is a joy to read. The satire in the book is uncompromising and biting. Because the book is a satire, the characters are somewhat one-sided. In addition, I get the impression that Dawn Powell put some part of herself (but not her whole character) in each of the people in her book-- the young person (Jonathan Jamison) leaving rural Ohio for a new life in New York City, the young sexually active women in the Village, the struggling artists, the aging unsucessful writer to take some examples.Thus I found the characterization effective.

The book works better as a series of minature episodes than as a connected novel. Each scene is tightly written and convincing written, as I indicated, in a lively and supple style. I got absorbed in the book page by page and incident by incident. Possibly as a result of this, there were times when I lost the thread of the story and the interrelationship of the characters.

The best part of the book, besides the writing style, is the picture drawn of Greenwich Village. The picture of life in the bars and of artists, some good some not-so-good, struggling in flats with their women, their friends and their agents is precious. Dawn Powell knew the life she described. Again, most of the characters, from the young man, Jonathan Jamison, through the women, through the ageing Ms. Van Orphen, were aspects of Dawn Powell herself, transmitted into one character or the other.

This is a frothy, light book not without its flaws. But I came away with the sense of discovery for which I had hoped. Dawn Powell deserves to be read. ... Read more

Product Description
Contemporary family life educators must operate in a wide range of settings and with increasingly varied populations and families. In the second edition of their successful Family Life Education, Powell and Cassidy expertly expose readers to the diverse landscape of the field while laying a comprehensive, practical foundation for future family life educators. The authors, both CFLE-certified, consider the Certified Family Life Educator certification requirements of the National Council on Family Relations throughout the text. Their broad overview of the field features a blend of theory and practice, with full chapters on sexuality education, marriage education, and parent education—areas that have received evaluation and certification attention. A new chapter on global trends builds awareness and appreciation of diversity through interactive classroom exercises. Each chapter in the book concludes with discussion questions, research problems, independent-study activities, and case-study suggestions, all designed to challenge readers to think for themselves. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

QUICK Delivery
When I ordered this product they told me 2-3 days on shipping. It was there in LESS than 24 hours! I was very impressed!

Textbook
This book was purchased as a required textbook for a course I was taking.It is easy to read and has a lot of good information. ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: Warren G. Harding, Edwin Taylor Pollock, William Estabrook Chancellor, Calvin S. Brice, Dawn Powell, Tim Belcher, Washington Gardner, Jeremiah Morrow, Richard Dillingham, Homer A. Ramey, William Graves Sharp. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 77. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Warren Gamaliel Harding (November 2, 1865 August 2, 1923) was the 29th President of the United States, serving from 1921 until his death from a heart attack in 1923. A Republican from Ohio, Harding was an influential newspaper publisher. He served in the Ohio Senate (18991903) and later as the 28th Lieutenant Governor of Ohio (19031905) and as a U.S. Senator (19151921). His conservative stance on issues such as taxes, affable manner, and campaign manager Harry Daugherty's 'make no enemies' strategy enabled Harding to become the compromise choice at the 1920 Republican National Convention. During his presidential campaign, in the aftermath of World War I, he promised a return to "normalcy". In the 1920 election, he and his running-mate, Calvin Coolidge, defeated Democrat and fellow Ohioan James M. Cox, in what was then the largest presidential popular vote landslide in American history since the popular vote tally began to be recorded in 1824: 60.36% to 34.19%. Harding headed a cabinet of notable men such as Charles Evans Hughes, Andrew Mellon, future president Herbert Hoover and Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall, who was jailed for his involvement in the Teapot Dome scandal. In foreign affairs, Harding signed peace treaties that built on the Treaty of Versailles (which formally ended World War I). He also led the way to world Naval disarmament at the Washington Naval Conference of 192122. Because of multiple scandals in his administration, polls of historians and scholars consistently rank Ha...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=33060 ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Dawn Powell, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 4310 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Product Description
This digital document is an article from World Literature Today, published by University of Oklahoma on June 22, 1996. The length of the article is 536 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The Diaries of Dawn Powell: 1931-1965.
Author: Doris Earnshaw
Publication: World Literature Today (Refereed)
Date: June 22, 1996
Publisher: University of Oklahoma
Volume: v70Issue: n3Page: p705(1)

Article Type: Book Review

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Product Description
This digital document is an article from New Criterion, published by Foundation for Cultural Review on September 1, 1999. The length of the article is 7589 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the supplier: This article discusses the relationship and written correspondences between Dawn Powell and Edmund Wilson. Letters written by the authors are included.

Citation Details
Title: Letters by Dawn Powell to Edmund Wilson.
Author: Tim Page
Publication: New Criterion (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 1, 1999
Publisher: Foundation for Cultural Review
Volume: 18Issue: 1Page: 10

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more