In lucid, compelling, and often poetic prose, the writer tells the story of a do-it-yourself award-winning transformation of the "ugliest house on the block," a one-hundred-year-old Victorian in the Strathmore section of Syracuse, NY, to the "most beautiful house in the city," the kind of creative activity that can lift the spirit and heal the heart. The almost mystical "call" to "do" this house propelled the writer, who discovered in the ripping out and tearing up, restoring and replacing, turning ugly into beautiful, that she was giving voice to a cry of the heart, a yearning to explore and penetrate the painful reality and confusion of growing up in an Amish-Mennonite family that produced her and three "mentally ill" siblings. The writer moves from saws and measuring tapes and false ceilings to matters of spirit, psyche, and heart. How does one rework, repair or fix a wounded psyche? Her musings and explorations are informed by a lifetime of reading; Willie Loman, Huck Finn, Viktor Frankl, Job, Simone Weil and Ernest Becker are among the many voices that join in the articulation of this story, as the renovation of the house morphs into the renovation of the heart or psyche, as the physical labor, the reading, and the creative work become the renovators.

Sometimes I Sing: The Renovation of House and Heart (bl/wh)

Hershberger, Mary

Cottonwood Press

Traveling to Vietnam is the first book to document the activities of the more than 200 American peace activists who traveled to Hanoi during the war in Southeast Asia. Eager to meet with representatives of the government of North Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government, these Americans came from backgrounds such as international peace organizations, the civil rights movement, and academic institutions. They usually traveled in small groups of three or four at a time and by 1969 averaged about one group a month. Their personal contacts with the Vietnamese later spurred them to organize humanitarian aid for North Vietnam, an activity that Washington strongly opposed. After visiting American POWs in Hanoi prisons, these Americans then tried to facilitate improved mail delivery between the prisoners and their families. And many of the activists attempted to, and succeeded in, arranging early releases for some American prisoners. Traveling to Vietnam is also an account of how Washington officials resisted these activists' efforts at every turn, seizing their passports and bank accounts and sabotaging their efforts to release American POWs. After the war was over, Hershberger writes, many of the travelers continued their ties to the Vietnamese and worked successfully to lift the American embargo against Vietnam.

Traveling to Vietnam: American Peace Activists and the War (Syracuse Studies on Peace and Conflict Resolution)

History

Americas

Syracuse University Press

As the recent presidential campaign revealed, the Vietnam War remains a political lightning rod. In the 1980s, even as a Gallup poll listed Fonda as one of the most admired women in the country, “Hanoi Jane” had become a reviled figure among conservatives for her highly publicized trip to North Vietnam in 1972. Today, according to a recent poll, millions of Americans continue to link Fonda’s name to Vietnam—yet the true history of her antiwar work has been largely obscured.
One of the most popular movie actresses of the 1960s and 1970s, Fonda was also among the most committed and visible antiwar activists of the era. Coming on the heels of Jane Fonda’s own memoir, this is the first book to document one of the most interesting (and least known) chapters in Fonda’s life—including the first comprehensive account of her controversial trips to Hanoi, as well as her extensive efforts on behalf of American GIs.
Based on unprecedented access to Fonda’s twenty-foot-thick FBI files, interviews with the former POWs Fonda met with in Hanoi in 1972, and a broad range of contemporary press reports, Jane Fonda’s War is a fascinating and little-understood chapter in the extraordinary life of an American icon.

Jane Fonda's War: A Political Biography Of An Antiwar Icon

Humor & Entertainment

The New Press

Jane Fonda's Words of Politics and Passion

Jane Fonda’s Words of Politics and Passion collects Fonda’s most stirring public statements from 1970 through 2005, in speeches, interviews, and articles from over thirty years of tireless campaigning against war and militarism and on behalf of women’s rights, women’s health, feminism, and the environment. Historian Mary Hershberger “has unearthed a treasure trove,” according to Ms. magazine. “Whether discussing peace, feminism or girls’ empowerment, [Fonda] is thoughtful, courageous and always committed to the betterment of others.”
In 1970, at the height of an award-winning acting career, Jane Fonda took a sharp turn into politics. She would go on to play an influential role in the anti–Vietnam War movement and in nearly every subsequent movement for social justice in the United States.
Hershberger has culled Fonda’s words from a range of little-known and previously inaccessible sources, including the declassified FBI files obtained by Fonda herself in a federal lawsuit, and from antiwar movement archives that have never been made available to a general public.

Movies

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Books by Hershberger, Mary

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hershberger, Mary. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Sometimes I Sing: The Renovation of House and Heart (bl/wh)

Traveling to Vietnam: American Peace Activists and the War (Syracuse Studies on Peace and Conflict Resolution)

Jane Fonda's War: A Political Biography Of An Antiwar Icon

Jane Fonda's Words of Politics and Passion