I am happy with the book. The pictures in it are absolutely beautiful, especially the art work that is displayed. The text is very well written and easy to understand as well. (There is also a thurough glossary contained in the book)

However, i was looking (expecting) a book that contained more information on particular spells that could easily be applied
to everyday life, and it didn't quite provide that on the level i wanted.

The information about the Lwa was well written and quite inspirational. It didn't touch too much on offering's to the Lwa though, or invocations.

Overall, it was a good book, just not quite what i was looking for, but an excellent addition to my VouDou Library.

This is an excellent resource for people just starting out in the religion. Highly recommended for its pictures/graphics AND content. A must have for any vodou library....

The author has done a great job with this visual ride through a unique culture. The book is written with the uninitiated in mind. The text doesn't delve too deep into the religion to lose the reader, but it conveys a rich and colorful tapestry of Voodou art and culture. If I had to pick a sub-title for this book, it would be "The Picture Book of Voodou" If you would like to round out the breath-taking visuals of this book with a deeper look at the religion, then I also recommend "Secrets of Voodoo"

Mardi is quietly determined to do well in America, even though she is resentful about having to come. The arrival of a "lost" uncle and a boy he is taking care of sets off a string of events that break through the icy core of reserve she has been harboring since her arrival.

This is another book that gives you a better understanding of another culture - or perhaps a deeper understanding of your own. The complex lives of people who have come to America and left their own country are sensitively portrayed here. The central story, although a bit predictable, is told so sympathetically that you can practically feel the individual and separate joys and pains of each person.

Fresh Girl by Jaira Placide is a wonderful book that has opened my eyes to the struggles many people face when they are torn between two cultures. This book gives the reader great insight into the life of a young adult who is trying to forget her terrible past and struggling to live her life in a new and different culture. Fresh Girl allows the reader to understand the pain, hate, and saddness that the main character, Mardi, experiences when she moves from Haiti to live in the United States. She left Haiti due to violence and corruption. Her new life in America was supposed to give her a safe and peaceful home to live in. Unfortunatly, her horrific experiences in Haiti and her racist peers will not allow her to have peace in her mind or heart. In order for Mardi to move on in her life she must learn to face her fears and tear down the walls she has built around herself.

Fresh Girl by Jaira Placide is a great debut. The book is about a girl named Mardi Desravines who was born in America, but was raised in Haiti. Mardi comes to America at the height of the Haitian Revolution. Mardi has problems adjusting to the abrupt changes in her once happy and serene life. She is the American who has to learn English. The daughter who doesn't really know her parents. She also holds inside the atrocities she witnessed before coming to America. Jaira's story telling hold its own with the immigrants stories of Edwidge Danticat, Julia Alvarez and Amy Tan. I really enjoyed entering Mardi's world and I think you will too.

I hope you give this young and daring writer a chance.

The book has two distinct sections. The first 100 pages is a report on the Mellon family lifestyle, and how a rich maverick Mellon got to Haiti. The rest of the book details Dr. and Mrs. Mellon's founding of a hospital and civil engineering projects in central Haiti.
An important finding is that the Mellon's hospital was founded on the humanitarian premise, "Reverence for life." Taken from Dr. Sweitzer's work in Africa, life refers not only to human life, but also plant and animal. This little detail is critical to understanding the book. Many missions to Haiti are Christian, while Dr. Mellon's hospital is distinctly humanistic primarily as presented in the book.
As all books on Haiti fairly present, doing anything in Haiti is hard, and without American financial support, very little work done lasts. The hospital Dr. Mellon founded did well as long as he provided two of the four million dollars needed to run it. His civil engineering projects, in which he was much more interested than medicine (he actually only practiced medicine 3 years), all crumbled when turned over to the Haitians. Many other cottage industries met the same fate.
The book thus captures the Haitian dilemna, how to serve in Haiti and lift up the Haitians to be self sufficient. If Dr. Mellon's millions couldn't do it, how can any of us with less money at our disposal. Never the less, we go to Haiti because we cannot not go, nor can we not go back after going once.
An excellent book about how a real rich guy did his best to follow his heart, not his accountant's advice, and another book about how a strong wife really does the grunt work while her husband plays with big boy's toys.

The life of William Larimer Mellon is an example of the life Americans should dream for themselves and those they love dearly. For one who majored in biology and gave it up for 18 years in auditing the paralells to Mellon's change of career and motivations struck me deeply. On witnessing the WTC disaster personally (a few hundred yards away) man should strive for something in life and go for it. Barry Paris well written account of a life inspired by Dr. Schweitzer is highly recommended to all readers committed to God and American morals and values. If readers have a noble vision the price of this book is totally insiginificant to the highest rewards you will gather from reading it.

Song of Haiti is an absolutely awesome book! As a nurse who has done mission work in Haiti, I found this book authentic, a true inspiration, as well as a compelling, indepth view of the lives of many dedicated and compassionate people. Barry Paris' work describes the country and the people in beautiful and fullfilling language. Oftentimes, I felt as if I were in Haiti again experiencing the amazing, hard-working and loving people of the country. I've never before read a biography with such griping prose. I looked forward to my time to read because I became more and more interested in the life of every person described - be it Dr. Mellon and Gwen or Albert Schweitzer, or the nurses and doctors and friends with whom they shared their lives. I believe this is the way that biographical work should be written. Song of Haiti is thorough in that it covers the entirety of Dr. Mellon's life, touching on his downfalls as well as his high acheivements. I found that the realism with which the story is told is excellent and believable. The many everyday encounters and adventures are interesting and mesmerizing - it makes a person want to travel and experience the third world for all of the beauty and intensity it offers. I recommend this book to everyone, regardless of your interest in medicine, mission work, or biography. It is amazing.

Contrarily to what could be expected by many readers - the author Lothrop Stoddard usually considered as having been one of the leading figures of the early 20th century white supremacist tendency - this is a suprisingly fair, balanced and well investigated book, a great work of History about the evenments that led to the foundation of the first independent black republic in the world - Haiti.

Two main lessons can be taken from such occurrence, even to our present days:

1º) Despite the hipothetic profit earned by an ethnic group having recourse to the exploitation of the slave (or, at least, cheap) workmanship of a different ethnic group, such a gain is always momentaneous, especially if the dominated partner becames the majority, consequently putting in cause the whole social and economic future of the former exploiter, now reduced to a defenseless minority (this is a strong warning to many current western societies, suffering and partially dependent from great and uncontroled flows of third world immigration);

2º) The intention to remedy an unfair situation (in the haitian case, slavery) cannot be directed in such a way that, paradoxally, generates more and deeper injustices.

A policy must be always conducted according the surrounding reality and cannot be based in abstract principles without the minimum contact with that same reality. For example, in the Haiti's case, the deliberate ignorance of the racial fact by the french revolutionary commisioners, completely blinded by the radical egalitarian dogma of the revolution, had, as final consequence, the entire extermination of the white population of the former french part of Santo Domingo island (it is curious to note that such commissioners behaved in an incredible similar way to the actual political correctness supporters...).

Santo Domingo is now Haiti. It has the dual distinction of being the first nation freed as a result of a slave revolt--and as the poorest land in the Western Hemisphere, despite a lush natural environment.

One clue to Haiti's poverty might be the total politcal chaos that ensues and has done since the Revolution--a reaction to the political vacuum left over resulting from the Revolution in France proper and mirroring many of the excesses of "the Terror."

The near immediate genocide of the white elite at the hands of the former slaves, and the disease-decimation of Napoleon's forces struggling to reunite the island with France led to economic and politcal chaos and the imposition of self-proclaimed emperors and dictators, many of whom fell victim to assassination, coup and exile.

Another element is outside interference, often in the name of "human rights"--twice from the US (1915 and 1994) alone.

A Mulatto elite is in a constant struggle for power against the ex-slaves who represent the bulk of the population.

Stoddard dispassionately chronicles the spiral into anarchy in this dispassionate--and highly researched--book. An indispesible addition to any library for anyone interested in history, culture, racism and human rights.

If you know Seabrook, and if you're halfway interested in magic, you should, you know how really well he writes. Most people are going to be interested primarily in the first section, which deals with "voodoo." He was much more open than most people of his era, and took as fair an approach to "voodoo" as was possible for a white man. If it doesn't look much like modern descriptions, that's because the religion is evolving.

Of real interest was his observation of the administration of Haiti. I was fascinated.

If they ever, ever reissue his "Witchcraft," snatch it up. I have an old copy, and it's wonderful.

I must admit that I am drawn to musty, old books like a moth to a flame. I hapharzardly ran across a 1929 hardcover edition of Seabrook's "Magic Island" and was immediately struck by the dark and brooding illustrations as well as the marvelous old black & white photos within its yellowed leaves. A brief thumbing through the chapter listings announced its topic to me: voodoo and black magic in Haiti.

Seabrook was a well-travelled journalist and author of numerous newspaper articles, short stories, and books. "Magic Island" finds him living in turn of the century Haiti and takes you deep into his search for information about voodoo and black magic as practiced among the locals. You are not only stepping back into early 1900's society and ways, but into the unspoken underbelly of Haiti that few "white" men were ever allowed to see.

This book is simply fascinating from front to back, but best to take into consideration the time period this was written and do not expect a rip-roaring-Indiana-Jones-style adventure that Hollywood has seemed to fill the current public's minds with. The book is indeed slow, as much of Seabrook's writing is of his conversations and meetings that ultimately lead him to the secret society and its practices. Have patience, though, and you will arrive to the "juicy" center and the voodoo rites Seabrook was allowed to witness and sometimes even participate in as an initiate.

I would suggest getting an early edition of this wonderful book as I did. By literally holding in your hands something that is as old as the story itself, it seems to somehow bring you a sense of proper time displacement and aids with the immersion into Seabrook's journey.

I look forward to reading other books by Seabrook as his life was as fascinating as it was sordid: author, world traveller, acquaintence of Aleister Crowley, chronic alcoholic, cannibalist, sexual sadist & masochist, and finally an institutionalized patient of the Rockland State Hospital up until his untimely suicide by an overdose of sleeping pills.

Perhaps his quests into the "other" side of human nature were merely a preamble to the bigger question of his ownself and his many demons that followed him. Regardless, you'll have fun going along for the ride.

This book is an excellent look back at Francois Duvalier, the quiet little "country doctor" from Haiti who by strange twists of fate became one of the most ruthless dictators in the history of the western hemisphere.

Papa Doc's origins are set against the wild backdrop of Haiti's revolving door governments, and her proximity to the Domincan Republic's bloodthirsty ruler, Rafael Trujillo.

The authors detail the political chess game Duvalier played with rulers like Batista and Castro in Cuba and Eisenhower and Johnson in the United States, playing cold war enemies against each other to secure his own power.

The book moves along quickly, if a bit matter-of-factly. Little analysis of personalities or motives is given, and the events in the book can pass by quickly and chaotically as the real life events in Haiti they chronicle. The prose is spare, but the insights the reader can infer are profound.

In short, anyone interested in the history of Papa Doc's rule in Haiti needs to read this book. It is out of print, but it is worth the search.

This book is a historical document. It is well written and easy to read. I couldn't put it down. It also prepared me for my trip to the island. I have had the pleasure and recommend two of his other books about Dictators: Trujillo; Death of the dictator. and Somosa: and the legacy of US involvement in Central America. A must read for all Political Science Majors or anybody who is interested in politics and dictators.

While the information in the book can be gotten elsewhere these days, Davis' text holds together quite well, and without caving in to any commercial artiface. The term "ethnobiology" seems a little much, however -- I am not sure that any new theoretical ground has been surveyed.

This is an excellent well written and well researched book that gripped my like few non-fiction books ever have, yet, it leaves science minded people hanging. After all the research Davis conducted it makes no sense that he failed to follow up with experimentation using tetrodotoxin in a laboratory setting. It seems that he comes so close to finding a new use for this sodium blocking drug but fails to follow up. Maybe he has and I just haven't been able to find it despite extensive efforts. If you know of any follow-up please e-mail me

I actually met Wade Davis when he came to Haiti to do his research on his book, and I know personnaly manny of the characters in the book. Wade did an excellent job in portraying what goes on in the underworld of Haiti.

The chapter when he talks about the driver of the commandant of St Marc who was actually a secret society leader and actually had more power and influence than his boss is really key point in the balance of power in Haiti. Those who seem to be nobodies sometimes have more power than presidents

Trouillot sets out to answer the question: How is history produced? And he does a reasonably good job in at least laying a framework for discussing such a complicated issue. He seeks a middle-ground between what he calls positivist historicity and constructivist historicity, arguing, in effect, that past events did indeed happen the way they happened but also that our memories, stories, myths about them greatly influence our understanding of them. Using as case studies the Haitian Revolution, Sans Souci (a Haitian slave turned colonel) and Columbus Day, he then attempts to show how certain aspects of events have been silenced by those in power. Trouillot succeeds in many ways; he explores issues with ample caution, gives a fine critical survey of the snags and hazy areas involved in the topic, and pins down a number of useful conceptual tools (such as the different stages in historical production at which facts might be silenced). Where he falls short, however, is ironically in his inadequate appreciation of the inherent selectivity of history - the reality that silences are necessary, inescapable, and even desirable. (By studying Beethoven's life we thereby, and properly, "silence" the life of some unexceptional contemporary). Trouillot's goal, beyond investigating the nature of historical production, is to demonstrate that those creating Western history have been biased and wrong in silencing the stories he's presently exposing. He backs up this claim with zero evidence; in spending so much time showing what has been silenced he never gets around to offering his view of what SHOULD be silenced. Thus, as purely an exploration into the process of historical production, "Silencing the Past" largely succeeds (although here too a better emphasis would be how and why facts are accepted rather than how and why facts are silenced - same theme, more fruitful orientation). The value judgments Trouillot occasionally slips into, however, are out of place and groundless. All aside, "Silencing the Past" is a challenging read and a quite thoughtful account of historical production.

Silencing the Past is an excellent account of how mistakes and mis-readings of history can contaminate the perspective an entire society's world view.

Troulliot's book is very applicable to the realm public history. Monuments, museums, displays and the like are all examples of how history influences our every day lives. Altough, without realizing it, we assume the things that we read and see in such places are entirely true. This is a mistake, as Troulliot points out, because, the amount we do know about our history, is only a fragment of what we don't know...and that when historians create public history they can only use the information available, which is most often the product of a white, western mind, published and tagged as 'history-proper'

Another factor in the use of history as a public tool is its tendency to be 'good' history. In that, all too often when history is presented to the public, it has a habit of being watered down, desanctified, and 'positively' presented. Only a curator with integrity and confidence would present a "full story," as more often than not, social taboos and political correctness prevent him from doing so. This is sad, as in the mean time, the historical process is damaged. What such a presenter of public history is doing when they present only favorable aspects of history is educating a public about half the story, which will then become part of a public world view, a world view, that is skewed in a way that will be very hard to correct.

A public mind is hard to change, the more a public wants to believe something, the longer they do. Believing a positive is always easier than the alternative. This is the importance of creating a sound, fair and accurate archive of public historical knowledge.

Troulliot's book serves a great purpose: it infects the reader with a historical vigilante syndrome. It tells the reader to be wary of history, but not to dismiss it. In so doing, he has created a masterpiece that informs, educates and calls the reader to act upon, and in many ways become, a vindicator of history and the historical process.

Michel-Rolph Trouillot argues that in the writing of history lots of things get lost and what is lost impacts our view of the past.

The first thing which is lost are some sources. For many of us there simply are no sources kept. For others there may have been historical traces but they have gotten lost or destroyed in time.

The next level of such data is that when data is collected and selected for various archives there is another level of things getting lost, sources, which there and existing, are effectively lost since there were not judged worthy of archiving.

Lastly, the individual historian much choose from the archival material what is important in telling the story of history the author is telling. Again in this process of selection events and parts of history get lost and suppressed.

What emerges as the story of history, what we, the readers and consumers of history come to regard as the REAL past, real history, is filtered in ways that we seldom acknowledge or realize.

Trouillot demonstrates this thesis with examples from Haitian history and chooses the clever divice of San Souci. There were three San Soucis. One was a person and two others were buildings. The first, the person was lost at the source. The second was weeded out in the typical archives. The last, while exciting at some level, is still not within the mainstream of most Haitian history. Trouillot books makes us sit back and realize that we have to realize there is no real HISTORY, but only the story that the sources that have survived and have been selected as important allow us to tell.

A delightful read. For a much more systematic and longer review please e-mail me and I'll send it to you.

Jean Robert Cadet blows away the notion that slavery is a thing of the past. Through his firsthand account of being a child slave, we learn how its horrors still plague our world. I don't think I have ever read a book that impacted me more. It inspired me to do my part, however small, to overcome slavery in Haiti and in our world.

In "Restavec", Jean-Robert Cadet recounts to us in disturbingly matter-of-fact language the outrage that was his childhood in Haiti.The illegitimate son of a wealthy man,he was given into slavery as a gift to his father's former mistress. The brutality of this woman, whom he came to think of as his mother, is recounted in excruciating detail. The facination of this book is in watching this brutalized child realize an escape from this degraded life. The parallels between Jean-Robert Cadet escape from slavery and Frank McCort's escape from abject poverty are very striking. The role of education in their own countries, and their fulfillment as teachers in the U.S. are just two similarities in their stories. "Restavec" is an intense read, not relieved by humor. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in a tale of human potential and quiet heroism.

For all those interested in the ways Haitian society operates, RESTAVEC is a must read and will occupy your mind a long time after you've put it down. But you will not be able to put the subject of this book to rest. As a child growing up in Haiti, You witness a lot of things that you do not consider abnormal. As far as I knew I belonged to my parents, and I considered other kids to be so. I knew Mr. Cadet, I played with him, I saw him everyday for at least four years, and only thaught of his adoptive mother as a strict disciplinarian. A lot of what my young eyes saw did not prepare me for what I read in this book. As they say in HAITI, nothing is what they seem. RESTAVEC has broken another link in this vicious chain of poverty and child abuse. BOB -as I used to call him - has overcome.

Although not Kurt Vonnegut's best novel, Deadeye Dick is an enlightening, fast-paced, and highly entertaining satrical look at the death of innocence and the randomness of life. Through the plot and the life of the protonagist, Rudy Waltz, we are shown how seemingly random and completely unforseeable events can completely change and/or wreck a person's life. Everything we do, however seemingly trivial, has a consequence. Vonnegut's writing style is as fluid and graceful as ever, with a prose, quick wit, and pace that will keep you reading. His ever-present humor and light touch with weighty subjects is apparent from the very first page. A good read that you will enjoy. If you are new to this author, I would recommend reading something like Cat's Cradle first, but this is a fine novel and recommended for all Vonnegut fans.

Vonnegut strikes again with his wit, although this time his cynnisism seems a bit muted. He gives us Rudy Waltz, son of two of the most eccentric people you will ever meet. Rudy as a young boy accidentally kills a young pregnant woman with his rifle thus earning the nickname and book title "Deadeye Dick". Rudy grows to become a pharmacist. He never leaves his parents and his accident as a child has a profound role in the rest of his life. He carries the guilt, is unable to forge new relationships, and is relatively unhappy for the rest of his life.

Seems like it would be a bit depressing but Vonnegut keeps the novel rolling with his social commentary on parenting, the medical field, the government, etc. etc. etc. Of course the accidental shooting is not the only misfortune to enter the lives of Rudy and his family but why ruin the book for you?

Vonnegut really kept me engrossed in this novel. It is a quick read and worth picking up, even if you haven't read much of his other work. A solid 4-Star novel.

Deadeye Dick was the first novel of Kurt Vonnegut that I read. I found it delightfully humorous, but also disturbing in the way he takes on society so innocently. Later, I read Slaughterhouse Five, and I must be one of the few people who enjoyed Deadeye Dick more. Why? Maybe because he dosen't force you to think about how bad things are so much this time. Vonnegut allows you to read this book on different levels: enjoying a work of fiction or reading a strong message. I personally loved both.