Historic Landmarks of Old New York by Museyon Guides

 Historic Landmarks of Old New York

by Museyon Guides is a full immersion in 99 old monuments of the city that never sleeps.

The Statue of Liberty, closed after 9/11 and later returned to be visited by wagons of people; Ellis Island the iconic place where emigrants arrived when they reached NYC.

Fraunces was the first tavern born in NYC. At the moment in thE second and third floor of the tavern there is a museum of the story of the American Revolution.

Then we will meet along our way Wall Street and other important economical buildings. The book will tell the important connections between Geoge Washingyon and NYC.

Speaking of church let's remember the Trinity one and Saint Paul's Chapel.

Iconic places that you must visit when you go to NYC are the Chrysler, the Empire State Building, the Brooklyn Bridge, the New York City Music Hall, the African Burial Ground.

Someone said that "If you live in New York, even if you’re Catholic, you’re Jewish" and so let's visit the Eldridge Street Synagogue.

Speaking of Parks there is the intriguing Washington Square Park, while once you'll be in the Greenwich Village you can't miss to visit 102 Bedford Street and the White Horse Tavern.The Greenwich village remains an iconic place for gays and lesbians and many are monuments and places dedicated to them.

In the East Village you'll be enchanted by the Astor Library, now transformed in a Theater.

Union Square, Pete's Tavern, the house of Teddy Roosevelt while at 4 Gramercy Park the residence of the current mayor of NYC; other unforgettable places.

In Chelsea the New York Public Library.

You can't miss if you afford to New York a visit and a pic close to the Waldorf-Astoria and the Hotel Plaza; the Ed Sullivan Theater deserves a visit like the Carnegie Hall. Oh, the story of Andrew Carnegie is enchanting. Please read it! And don't foget the book dedicated to him written by Marie Benedict.

Other places to visit are the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Andrew Carnegie's Mansion. 

If you are a reporter goes to Blackwell's Island. There was an asylum dedicated to mad people. Nellie Bly, journalist and reporter close to mr Pulitzer entered in the asylum as a fake patient, discovering a horrible scenario. Her  reportage made journalism history changing the course of information and opening the so-called era of investigative journalism.

I can't forget to mention to you Central Park! It must be immense, beautiful and maybe the first place I would want to visit once there, Broadway and Empire State Building apart.

But...It's not important what you'll visit once in NYC. For sure that city will change you and your perspective on the world.

Enjoy this guide and bring it with you when you'll visit the city. Apart the description of the several monuments, there are also portraits of people who made NYC like Rockefeller, Carnegie, the Astorias and many more, plus a lot of stories and anedocts of a city unique in its genre.

Highly recommended book.

I thank Museyon Books for the copy of the guide.

Anna Maria Polidori 

A Propos de l'Affaire Eichmann by Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers

 The book A Propos de l'Affaire Eichmann

by Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers published by l'Herne will add new reflections on the Eichmann trial and what it was the concept of mass extermination of people, a "modern novelty" introduced by Hitler, who was fixated with an ethnic group, the Jewish one and guns in grade to exterminate entire countries and people.

It's a short book this one but plenty of important and shocking realities.

Hannah Arendt decided to follow the Eichmann trial. She wanted to do that with all herself and what she discovered and what reported can be read in the New Yorker and in a book she wrote on Eichmann.

Eichmann was captured in Argentina: he was for the locals Ricardo Klement. 

Maybe, of all the observations made during that writings, one of the biggest one was that some jewish people in Allemand have been collaborants with Hitler and wanted the mass deportation of Jewish people: Arendt treated largely the topic in the written articles for the New Yorker and later also in Eichmann a Jerusalem introducing an expression that remained: de banalitè du Mal.

For this reason her articles and book had been lived with polemic and boycotted by some Jewish people who did not appreciated her considerations.

Eichmann has been the mind of the process of mass extermination as written before but in the trial he did not manifest any remorse for what he did. They executed tons of people without having the perception of what, in a daily base, they were doing to a large part of the population and sufferances caused.

Or better: they had completely deleted from their mind the fact that they were men; they became beasts, and they acted, till at the end, like that.

For this reason during the trial was possible to see a necrosis of compassion and understanding of what it was done as if, what it was going on during the years of conflicts in concentration camps, could be classified as natural in the order of things.

That's why, admonishes at some point Arendt, it is so important not to forget: because when a story has been lived it is more probable a repetion of it than not if an event has not yet never seen before: memories and witnesses are crucial in these cases, let's underline it.

Karl Jaspers discusses largely of the possibility of mass extermination via the most diversified ways of a lot of people: an action wanted by governments and never seen before the last world war conflict, with the mass extermination of Jewish people and the two nuclear bombs launched by the Americans in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Enjoy the reading of this book for discovering realities still unknown and for thinking at the state of the world.

Highly recommended.

I thank Editions L'Herne for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Petit éloge du baiser by Jérôme Attal

 That French people consider l'Amour at the first place in their existence is more than known and that's why all the world is attracted by France and french people: they are reassuring.

Men and women have a great reputation on the field: they are considered big lovers, amatoeurs because in love for love, amour, and the various declinations that we give to it.

The most important component of a brief, long relationship are, for sure, kisses: the most intimate moment in a couple. If you remember, in the movie Pretty Woman, at first, Vivien didn't want to kiss her client for not staying affectively too closed to his soul.

Kissing, so, is the latest thematic of the newest book Petit éloge du baiser

by Jérôme Attal.

Kisses are of every sorta.

Cyrano de Bergerac tried to define the meaning of kiss adding that it is: "Un point rose qu’on met sur l’i du verbe aimer," and again "Un instant d’infini qui fait un bruit d’abeille",  and also "Une façon d’un peu se respirer le cœur/Et d’un peu se goûter, au bord des lèvres, l’âme".

Paris is the perfect location for story and kisses, admits Attal: wherever you go, you can kiss a person making happy the City of Love, because its multiformity permits the meeting of many wonderful corners where is possible a romantic moment and an immersion in another...mouth.

Jerome describes his amourous existence: a man who has had a lot of women, his first encounter with love, when still little, was a bit traumatic because at that time his soul was still candid. 

Kisses can becomes an addition. Jerome tells that one day, meeting a teenager, he asked her if she had a boyfriend, but she confessed him that she was kissing a lot of boys, without any kind of other serious involvement.

A kiss is sublime, intense and at the same time can be different: wanted, stolen, felt, precious, unique, immaterial but material for the goodness that donates to the body.

The book has a chapter all dedicated to muscles, sensations, feelings, felt by the organism when two people are involved in a kiss-section and also an historic chapter born thanks to a... dinner.

When the pandemic appeared to the horizon, a french website dedicated to the cinema decided, everyday, considering the state of captivity experienced by people in particular in cities where sociality was highly reduced for saving the existence, of posting a picture of a special, famous kiss. It was a way for trying to re-capture the sensation of freedom and what had been before this immense and horrific situation.

But, being french absolutely romantic, Arnauld Miguet posted a picture from his window, adding: "Le seul vrai langage au monde est un baiser," the only true language in this world is a kiss.

Jerome describes kisses as an alchemic moment, so extraordinary that the present and the ordinary existence changes. A magnetic kiss, means the entrance in a labyrinth of emotions.

Reporting to the reader also his multiform adventures and partners with which he shared little or big important moments and a lot of kisses, you will also find poems: he will also tell us the most important kisses in the story of the cinema and TV with a chapter dedicated to Ross and Monica and Rachel of the beloved American TV series Friends.

One of his latest lines in the book says: "Mon premier baiser avec toi, je l’ai tellement attendu,et tu me l’as donné quand je ne m’y attendais pas. Voilà pourquoi c’est un très beau premier baiser", My first kiss with you:I have been waiting this moment and you have donated me a kiss, when I wasn't attending it. Voilà, that's why to me this one is a very beauty first kiss."

Beautiful book.

Highly recommended.

I thank Editions Les Peregrines for the copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

GAY, CATHOLIC, AND AMERICAN My Legal Battle for Marriage Equality and Inclusion by Greg Bourke

 GAY, CATHOLIC, AND AMERICAN

My Legal Battle for Marriage Equality and Inclusion by Greg Bourke is a new enchanting book proposed by Notre Dame Press.

I was attracted by this book because as I said to the publicist I have many friends in Kentucky and so it's like to return in a place I know pretty well. I know their words, their mind, and I am affectionated to all of them.

The story sounded pretty captivating and in fact, I wasn't wrong, this book is a quick and enjoyable reading. Mr. Bourke is simply a wonderful human being! that you can just admire, respect, love because of a life well-spent where he added some contributions for bettering the existence of everyone. 

I waited for a strong witness at first, of someone who had fought most of the time for seeing recognized his right to be who he wanted to be, but the story is pretty different in this case and much much more relaxing.

Greg grew up in a democratic family of Kentucky and so his being gay hasn't never been a drama for his parents. Not only:  he has always been a fanatic of church because he has grown up in a Catholic family where every sunday mass was a ritual.

And Greg also when attended the university preserved these traditions.

It is during these years that he meets, an evening, the companion of his existence, Michael.

Love at first sight, the two of them will stay forever together.

They have been very lucky because in the churches where they attended masses there were many gay priests, so they haven't met any kind of problem, and their life has proceeded with great success. When Greg afforded to the North of the USA for a work, Michael didn't hesitate and followed him. Later the couple afforded in Massachussets. Many great meetings and encounters, a church with many gays and lesbians, the couple lived happy and joyous moments because of the relaxed atmosphere that they breathed.

Anyway, there is to add that also in Kentucky, sometimes a more conservative State, they haven't never experienced problems. 

They returned home in Kentucky for staying more close to their parents and for buying a house. Plus, the idea of adopting a baby became an urgent desire: laws in Kentucky permitted at that time just the adoption for a single parent, so substantially Greg didn't have any rights on the baby if Mike would have experienced a tragic departure or a big problem. The mother who donated the life to their baby is constantly involved in the existence of their son: good relationships matured during the pregnancy of their future son. 

Greg and Michael will adopt a second kid; this time more grown-up. Someone suggested them a little baby, because these kids put in adoption in particular when older can be pretty conflictuals, but Greg and Mike believed, strongly believed in this kid and they became proud parent of a successful boy.

Back to the story: they, at the end, became a married couple in Ontario, Canada; the old parents of Greg could not attend the ceremony, but the one of Michael yes, exactly like closest relatives.

One day one of their children asked the permission of entering in the boy scouts: and here, maybe for the first time in his existence, Greg meets some problems.

If fact, if in the church where they went regularly they had and have great reputation and never encountered a problem, when Greg is involved in the association as scout leader, later will be removed....It's a long story, you will see and at the end he will fight for obtain justice.

Another problem was the sentence Windsor. This man had married another man in Canada but Kentucky had "deleted" that union. You can just imagine the panic in the existence of this couple who had decided for the marriage for giving more security to their children and to themselves.

So, this couple fought for the legalization of same-sex marriage obtained in 2015 thanks to the sentence Obergefell vs. Hodges. 

The couple has chosen where to stay once dead, and Greg is more than sure that they will rest together till the end of their existence.What can I add apart that this one, a memoir, is a beautiful, refreshing human and love-story spent without excessive dramas and lived very well?

It's a tender, wonderful book, this one, written with love; it will enter in the hearts of people with great simplicity, for staying there and remembering us that God is a good guidance.

Highly recommended to everyone!

I thank Notre Dame Press for the copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

C'è un Cadavere al Bioparco by Walter Veltroni

 C'è un Cadavere al Bioparco

by Walter Veltroni is a new book published by Marsilio. A new investigation for Buonvino, Goodwine in english, the commissioner of police located in Rome. This time we enter in the immense Bioparco of the capital of Italy, for discovering a corpse. Not a corpse killed with a certain decency, if you can pass me this expression, but dilaniated. In what way?

As maybe you'll know, the biggest serpent of this world is the anaconda. 

Good: someone killed the man, for later decapitating him, throwing to the starved and scared anaconda body and head. The anaconda, for sport, this one is a pretty articulated murderer, sadic, had to be fed that days, and, stressed, upset and scared by the various events, for sport ground the corpse, eating also the head, considering that was close to it, for later thinking that maybe it was better to re-vomiting it. Maybe it wasn't too tasty.

The scenario, pretty heavy, interested the commissariato of mr Buonvino. People involved in the crime various ones, because the man killed wasn't a saint: the modality of killing, with the disfiguration of the body, and an unrecognizable head says everything.

I can't tell you more of this story, but I can write several reflections on Buonvino the alter-ego of mr.Veltroni, an italian politician: writer and journalist, he was also the editor of L'Unità. Plenty of tenderness and romanticism in the description of the love-story of Buonvino and Veronica, he donates to this story a touch of very appreciated old-fashioned feelings.

Highly recommended.

I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

The Way of the Rabbit by Mark Hawthorne

 The Way of the Rabbit

  by Mark Hawthorne is a new book published by John Hunt Publishing. I was curious to read this book because, I admit, I love rabbits. Having lived most of the time in a countryside, I have always seen rabbits around, although in my part of the world we, ahem, keep them for later killing and eating them. 

Rabbits are very nice, tender and shy and they have many good characterial treats:  friendships,  courage, history, playfulness, spirit,  ability to forgive.

They are fantastically enchanting if you are lucky enough to seeing them around while they are playing all together.

Romans brought rabbits in England and these little animals are associated with spring (see the voice: Easter) the moon, rejuvenation, fertility, so animals in grade to bring good luck: in the past people thought also that they could be signals of bad omen.

A beautiful chapter is completely dedicated to legends associated with rabbits. An example? A Menominee legend tell us that we should thanks for the creation of the world a Rabbit and...a Owl. The rabbit didn't want to live in an undefined world and asked to the owl some advice. The owl thinking that the rabbit was a fool decided of having a contest with him: the winner would have chosen for a perennial day or... night. At the end the winner was the rabbit and decided to alternate night and day because in this way the world would have been more balanced.

Easter is the rabbit-season. For sure the little animal more recognizable and felt as Easter's symbol, dove apart: probably it's in the pagan legends and traditions that we start to see the rabbit as co-protagonist. As you'll understand also the name Easter, maybe is an echo of pagan characters...

And we can't be so sure that Lewis Carroll hasn't been inspired for the creation of the white rabbit by the so-called "pilgrim rabbit" located in the church of St.Mary.

Literature having as main character rabbits is pretty fertile: it is driven by Helen Beatrix Potter, and Richard Adams with Watership Down: a chapter is dedicated to the art associated with rabbits; there was also a vampire rabbit located close to St. Nicholas’s Churchyard. It is still unknown the reason why they built that kind of magical and horrific creature, but maybe they did it because with "his spooky presence was meant to ward off grave robbers" writes the author.

If also filmakers were and are interested in rabbit, with the time was also created a special coktail named after them.

Rabbit in the Home is a special chapter, interesting because describes pretty well the condition of rabbits in a cage or little environment dedicated to them where there is little interaction with people, but also new ideas for keeping them, when as domestic animals, so for a longer time, in a state of much more freedom.

Rabbits are intelligent animals. I remember when we set free two rabbits. They lived indipendently well outside, enjoying the grass and nutriments that they found, and living with joy and happiness at long.

Very interesting book! Sunny, very well-documented and plenty of informations.

Highly recommended.

I thank John Hunt Publishing for the copy o the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Magick and Broomsticks The Portal to Your Wild Side A 90 Days Journal by Jacqueline Pirtle

 Magick and Broomsticks

The Portal to Your Wild Side A 90 Days Journal by Jacqueline Pirtle will let you think and act quickly: thanks to the wildest part of our being we will enter in posses of our own existence, living free and joyous as a dolphine, but, first of all, remember, thanks to our own magical touch.

In this book is stimulated in particular the wild side of us; accompanied and followed by these sacred internal forces that are quiet commons in our existence, we will be in grade to win obstacles becoming strong and creative women at the same time.

This book will donate to the reader the most magical part of her, what she would want to be, who she is and how she can tranforms her existence for better. We will be in a rainbow like a leprechaun,  visualizing its colors, imagining to be a queen, or an animal; we will be tranported by a cloud and broomstick where we want; we will visualize ourselves under the semblance of a flower; we will drink a cup of tea more than like a ritual, as a powerful and magical beverage in grade of turning our dreams in reality: we will describe what we see looking up the sky. Tranformation will also mean the creation of beauty and brilliance in good and sad moments of our existences.

Candles: let's speak of them: beauty, suggestive, magical, they re-connect us with past, present, future; they calm down our spirit, or, differently, t give us more energy and atmosphere. Which are your favorite ones?

Who resemble pure magic to you while you create your own magic potion?

This journal is spectacularly beauty! Highly suggested!

I thank Jacqueline Pirtle for the copy of the book!

Anna Maria Polidori