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John Dewey and the Lessons of Art
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"Philip Jackson's searching meditations on Dewey and art are of abiding interest for all of us who care about our lives and how we nurture and nourish our children." Howard Gardner, Harvard Graduate School of Education "Jackson presents a useful and...insightful review of John Dewey's systematic consideration of the arts...Jackson examines Dewey's theories on how the arts might help people live their lives differently. He also asks teachers of all kinds to consider how they might use the 'lessons' of art in their role as educators...This book makes a sound addition to commentary on the writings of John Dewey and to the fields of curriculum studies, educational philosophy, and arts education." Choice
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Olga Rudge and Ezra Pound: "What Thou Lovest Well..."
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As the first scholar to gain access to the papers of Pound's longtime mistress, independent scholar Anne Conover has unearthed plenty of insights into the daily life and thought of Ez and those who surrounded him. Olga Rudge and Ezra Pound: "What Thou Lovest Well" documents the whole of Rudge's long life (1895-1996), with emphasis on all things Ezra. While mostly for the faithful, Rudge's 20th-century transcontinental existence as a violinist and musicologist (helping to revive Vivaldi's work) holds interest for feminists and others with interest in the status of women in the arts.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (Yale Historical Publications Series)
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In 1898, the United States entered a war with Spain to liberate Cuba from the European power's imperialist grasp. A few years later, it waged war against the PhilippinesAbut this time to further its own imperialist agenda. Over the last 100 years, historians have pondered the causes of these conflicts, basing their theories on economics, politics, or culture. Here, Hoganson (history/literature, Harvard) adds a new dimension to the historiography of the wars by examining how gender beliefs may have been motivational factors for leaders in both struggles. This unique work, based on the author's dissertation and relying on a host of primary and secondary sources, might go well with John Tebbel's more popularly written America's Great Patriotic War with Spain (LJ 10/15/96) and Ivan Musicant's Empire by Default (LJ 12/97), a readable military history. A useful addition to any academic or larger public library.ATheresa McDevitt, Indiana Univ. of PennsylvaniaCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Cosimo de` Medici and the Florentine Renaissance
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The most powerful figure in the political and economic life of early Renaissance Florence, Cosimo de' Medici was also its greatest patron of the arts. In her vigorously argued and exhaustively documented study, Kent (history, Univ. of California, Riverside) has examined virtually every facet of Medicean patronage between 1420 and 1464. In doing so, she uncovers and explicates the complex of civic, religious, personal, and dynastic impulses that undergird Cosimo's almost innumerable sacred and secular commissions. The result is a perspective that forcefully manifests the patron's participation while delineating the social and intellectual ambiance in which he flourished and which engendered the values and ideas articulated in the works he commissioned. The complex interaction among patron, artist, and society as well as consumer, creator, and viewer are propounded with a depth of historical understanding not often found in the literature of art history. Kent's immensely learned, contextually alert, and provocative investigation establishes a standard against which all future studies of patronage will be measured.DRobert Cahn, Fashion Inst. of Technology, New YorkCopyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Philip V of Spain: The King Who Reigned Twice
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Sometimes imagining himself a frog, and repeatedly believing himself to be dead, Philip V, the first Bourbon on the throne of Spain, has been a risible figure for many historians. For others, Philip, who ruled from 1700 to 1746, was a despicable absolutist who too briefly abdicated the throne in 1724, or a weak man easily dominated by his Italian-born second wife, Elizabeth Farnese. But Kamen, a historian of the early modern era with the Higher Council for Scientific Research in Barcelona, has made his career destroying established scholarship. In The Spanish Inquisition (1998), he undercut the "Black Legend" of Spanish brutality and intolerance, placing the holy tribunal in a more realistic historical context. Here, he argues that Philip in fact helped ensure the economic, political and cultural revival of his adopted country, that he was entirely uninterested in absolutist power and that the salacious accusations regarding his sexual appetite are without foundation. Although he postures this scholarly work as a personal biography of Philip V and not a historical review of the king's reign, Kamen's rehabilitation is sometimes excessive: for instance, his claim that, under Philip, "Spain awoke to adequate food supplies" is undermined by his own admission that royal policies aggravated the problem of poverty. Moreover, the author admits that the cultural advancements (with a Parisian influence) that the king encouraged had little effect beyond the court and that Philip's manic depression quite clearly had a crippling effect on his capacity to govern. Still, this remains a humane work, as well as a provocative one, notably in its treatment of Elizabeth, whose apparently authoritarian behavior was, Kamen suggests, simply the result of a loyal decision to act decisively on behalf of her beloved but incapacitated husband.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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John Ruskin: The Later Years
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Beginning in 1859, the second volume of Tim Hilton's sterling biography of John Ruskin chronicles much suffering and sadness, as well as spiritual and artistic growth. The deaths of his beloved parents, in 1864 and 1871, snapped Ruskin out of self-indulgence and a tendency to complain. His love for Rose La Touche, only 9 years old when he met her in 1858 and appalled when he declared his feelings in 1866, would last throughout this morbidly pious girl's lingering illness and beyond her death in 1875. He had bouts of mental illness that finally incapacitated him in the decade before his death in 1900. Yet these were also the years in which Ruskin wrote his fascinating autobiography,Praeterita, and the innovativeFors Clavigera. Hilton believes this series of 96 pamphlets addressed to British workers to be Ruskin's masterpiece, a revelation of "the continuing life of the mind" as their author ranged from Dante to the English Poor Laws to the iconography of the penny. Hilton discusses these and the underlying themes of Ruskin's life with remarkable clarity and an impressive range of knowledge. He enables modern readers to decipher the idiosyncratic thoughts and feelings of a great Victorian who was "a glory of the nation's literature, and an important part of its social conscience."--Wendy Smith
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Love and Loss: American Portrait and Mourning Miniatures (Yale University Art Gallery)
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This thick book's other dimensions are approximately those of a next-larger-than-regular-size postcard. Yet most of its colorplates are full-scale reproductions, for the brilliantly lifelike paintings in them are tiny portraits painted in watercolor on thin ivory disks. During the hundred years before photography, they were all the rage among Americans who could afford their highly skilled creators' fees. Before that, they had evolved from medieval manuscript illuminations and enjoyed 400 years' popularity in Britain. Such famous American artists as Benjamin West, John Singleton Copley, and the three generations of Peales produced them regularly. Frank reviews some 100 outstanding examples, reporting their genesis, generally as intimate mementos of loved ones who were frequently absent or who had died, and examining their technical qualities. Fascinating art history that makes for a near-perfect book to while away the hours with.Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Sacred Visions Early Paintings from Central Tibet
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Buddhist art reflects the culture that created it, and the wide divergence of expression in Buddhism is well illustrated by these two catalogs of Tibetan and Japanese art. Not only are the two countries far distant, but their understanding of the precepts of Buddha are radically different. The Tibetan paintings presented in Sacred Visions are attempts to elucidate the mysteries of Tantric or Esoteric Buddhism. Intricate mandalas, multilimbed deities linked in sexual union, serene monks, and images of the many concepts of Buddha are well illustrated in vibrant color photos, each accompanied by a page of religious explanation and artistic analysis. The vivid colors and intricate designs are well conveyed, but slick paper and modern printing don't do justice to the velvety surface of the originals. The Japanese treasures from Nara are so beautifully photographed that it is a pity the photographers are not credited; their contribution matches that of the three writers. Conveying the three-dimensionality of sculpture in photographs is a subtle and exacting art, and the Cleveland Museum has created an exhibition catalog that will have lasting value by virtue of its attention to the quality of photography and printing. The broader range of both the text and the objects illustrated?sculpture, paintings, ceramics, furniture, and bronzes?will bring a broader audience to Buddhist Treasures from Nara, while the narrow focus of Sacred Visions will increase its value to scholars of religion and art.?David McClelland, PhiladelphiaCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an alternateHardcoveredition.
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The Golden Deer of Eurasia
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Many of the world's most exciting archaeological discoveries are being made in the central steppes of Eurasia, the vast undulating grasslands that stretch from Hungary to the Pacific. For thousands of years, nomadic tribes sharing strong cultural affinities flourished here, producing artworks of great power and vitality of which the objects illustrated in this book are spectacular examples.The Golden Deer of Eurasiais the catalog of an exhibition jointly organized by the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia. It presents objects dating from the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. unearthed from burial mounds near Filippovka at the foot of the Ural Mountains. Of the 212 catalog items, two-thirds are recent finds from Filippovka, including gold jewelry, golden plaques showing scenes of animal combat, and gold-plated sculptures of mythological deerlike creatures with predatory muzzles and wide-branching antlers. Other treasures in the exhibition, borrowed from the Hermitage's immensely rich collections of Scythian and related cultures, put the new discoveries in context. The significance of these unique objects is explained in short chapters by American and Russian scholars; subjects range from social customs of the vigorous and violent steppe-peoples to conservation techniques. In addition to objects demonstrating the raw exuberance of the nomads' production, there are exquisite gold drinking vessels that use nomadic decorative themes but were made by Iranian and Greek craftsmen for trade with the tribes--a fascinating example of trade influencing art. As expected from a Met publication,The Golden Deer of Eurasiaoffers both an art book produced to the highest standards and cutting-edge scholarship on an important and fashionable area of art-historical research.--John Stevenson
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A Bishop's Tale: Mathias Hovius Among His Flock in Seventeenth-Century Flanders
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In 1987, Craig Harline, professor of history at Brigham Young University, and Eddy Put, senior assistant at the Belgian National Archives, struck gold. In a dusty Belgian archive, they found a detailed daybook kept by Mathias Hovius, who served as archbishop of Mechelen (part of modern Belgium) from 1596 to 1620. Harline and Put spent the next 13 years turning that daybook intoA Bishop's Tale: Mathias Hovius Among His Flock in Seventeenth-Century Flanders, an extraordinary work of historical biography.It would be difficult to overstate the pleasures of this book. Its historical method is unusually accessible and sophisticated. ("In seeking to understand a world long past, we found it highly illuminating to begin with a single human being rather than a large abstraction such as 'society.'") Its style is straightforward and novelistic, with a wealth of detail that humanizes its exotic subjects. (For instance, the archbishop had "no protruding hairs on his upper lip, lest while celebrating Mass he obstruct the blood of Christ.") Even individual sentences often display a stunning, wide-angled perspective on individual events. (An explosion "sent stones rocketing up to two miles away, flattened houses, damaged churches, killed 300 people, wounded 150, and decapitated fish in the river.") And its characters--monks, nuns, millers, peasants, saints, who incidentally illustrate major themes of the Reformation-- are vital and ribald and doomed and striving. Harline and Put say they chose to write about the Reformation because of "its massive rupturing of a seemingly eternal premise of Christianity: that it was one." In an afterword, Harline and Put explain that "Never before had there been such widespread teaching, preaching, and fighting over souls, or such excellent preservation on paper of these efforts. Rich documents are often the fruit of zeal." The authors' own zeal to show readers the world of this bishop has created a very rich book about Reformation Christianity.--Michael Joseph Gross
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Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe: Toward the Revival of Higher Education
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According to Hart (English, Dartmouth Coll.), the interaction between Athens and Jerusalem, between philosophical-scientific ideas and scriptural-moral thought, has made Western civilization unique. Similarly, the literature of Western civilization from the Iliad and Exodus, to the Divine Comedy and Hamlet, and on to Crime and Punishment and The Great Gatsby has continued this "dialectical tension," the melding of these two seemingly opposite premises. Hart believes that it is imperative that college students continue to study Western civilization and its literature but asserts that more and more institutions of higher learning have pushed such courses aside, favoring the more politically correct concept of multiculturalism. Hart's ideas aren't necessarily new, but his call to arms is justified. Studying the dichotomy between Athens and Jerusalem forces us to examine not only other cultures but also our own prejudices. The tension created between intellect and faith, Hart rightfully suggests, aids freedom and democracy. Primarily for academic and larger public libraries. Terry Christner, Hutchinson P.L., KSCopyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Bridge of Dreams : The Mary Griggs Burke Collection of Japanese Art
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Accompanying an exhibition of masterpieces from the Mary Griggs Burke collection, the largest and most encompassing private collection of Japanese art outside of Japan, this exhibition catalog showcases the finest works of the collection, dating from the proto-literate era (ca. 10,500 B.C.E.-ca. 300 B.C.E.) through the Edo period (1615-1868). Murase, a Columbia University professor and research curator at the Metropolitan Museum, advised Burke in her nearly four decades of collecting activities. Following a chronological organization, he explores and demonstrates the impact of Buddhism and Chinese literati painting on the formation of the Japanese artistic tradition. Extravagantly illustratedDmore than two thirds of the nearly 450 illustrations in colorDand supported by a glossary are a list of selected readings, this book lives up to Metropolitan Museum standard. This handsome volume will be a delightful addition to large art collections in academic and public libraries.DLucia S. Chen, NYPLCopyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Gothic Architecture (The Yale University Press Pelican History of Art)
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Yale University Press Pelican History of Art Series
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In the Image of God: Religion, Moral Values, and Our Heritage of Slavery
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Most of these essays are reviews of other writers' work. Although uneven in quality, they constitute an engaging introduction to historians concerned with "our heritage of slavery." An autobiographical introduction frames the book's five parts, which roughly coincide with the categories of the subtitle. Part 1 reviews biographies of Reinhold Niebuhr and Martin Luther King, then turns to Jewish-African American relations in the context of the controversy over Jewish involvement in the slave trade. Parts 2 and 3 discuss historians C. Vann Woodward and Eugene Genovese and consider what in one piece is called "the labyrinth of slavery." Further on in part 3 and in part 4, Davis initiates readers into a lively conversation among historians about relationships between capitalism and slavery and about the complex question of resistance. In part 5, Davis turns to the social construction of race and interrelations among race, class, and gender. He relentlessly resists simplification and maintains a global perspective, but his insistence on complexity doesn't make his work inaccessible. He proves a worthy guide for walking through the labyrinth with open eyes.Steven SchroederCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Salamanca, 1812
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[A] detailed history. . . rigorous research, obscure eyewitness accounts, and personal insight. . . [for] students and enthusiasts of Napoleonic warfare. . . --Kirkus Reviews
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Sir Francis Drake: The Queen`s Pirate
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Remembered in standard history texts as an adventurer who helped extend England's maritime empire to the coasts of Africa and the Americas, Francis Drake roamed the world under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth I. He enriched her coffers by attacking Spanish merchant ships in the Caribbean, raiding ports, looting churches, and taking a cut of the slave trade--the acts not of a military man, Harry Kelsey argues, but of a pirate, and of a cowardly one at that as he was given to fleeing at the first sign of danger, leaving his men behind. Even so, for his services Elizabeth awarded Drake a knighthood and a degree of immunity until he failed to appear at his post during a naval engagement against ships of the Spanish armada. He then lost the queen's favor and disappeared from history's stage. Drake has few champions today, certainly fewer than he did in Elizabethan times. Even then he was none too popular. This well-written revisionist biography explains why.--Gregory McNamee--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide Revised Edition
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In the words of this book's introduction, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a "living encyclopedia of world art," with collections including art from almost every known culture and almost every known period. While no guidebook can reasonably cover all of the museum's major works, this reference does a fine job of skimming the surface in 470 tightly packed pages. From musical instruments to ancient ruins, each cornerstone of the collection is represented in color with a caption headed by the work's title, artist, medium, and dimensions. (The date of the piece is unfortunately buried in the caption's text.) General information and floor plans are included at the beginning of the book, making this the perfect introduction to the museum and an ideal aid to planning an artistic excursion.--This text refers to an alternateHardcoveredition.
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Plutarch
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"An excellent book that offers real literary and historical criticism, sound scholarship, and an interesting interpretation." --Frances B. Titchener, Utah State University
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John Singer Sargent: The Sensualist
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One of the most beloved American painters, Sargent (1856-1925) is lately undergoing critical reevaluation. Fairbrother concentrates on the quality in his work that, more than any other, appeals most powerfully to most viewers. Sargent was, museum official Mimi Gardner Gates says in the foreword, "a reserved person who made exuberant art." Essential to that exuberance is the keen attractiveness of the figures, male and female, clothed and nude, in his work. If they aren't all necessarily sexy, those that could be--robust adults--virtually always are, and few fail to evoke the desire to touch, even to caress, them. Fairbrother presents a ravishing selection of Sargent's paintings and graphic art as he explores the personal sources of the sensuousness of Sargent's work and the techniques he used to achieve it. An album of Sargent's male figure studies, printed on cream-colored stock, fetchingly concludes the book.Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Shakespeare's Sonnets (Yale Nota Bene)
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Stephen Booth is at the University of California, Berkeley.
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The Other Boston Busing Story: What`s Won and Lost Across the Boundary Line
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In 1966, the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity in Boston bused 220 inner-city Boston black children to schools in seven largely white suburban areas. By 2000, METCO was busing 3,100 kids to 32 suburbs. The program's endurance and expansion over 30 turbulent years of race politics is reason enough to make it the focus of detailed analysis. Eaton, a civil rights researcher at Harvard and coauthor of Dismantling Desegregation, chose to study METCO by interviewing former students whose firsthand memories break up Eaton's sometimes tedious sociological prose and give more depth to the analysis. One former student, Sandra, wonders aloud if she'd really gotten a better education in the suburbs, concluding, "other people think I did and that matters." We hear Marie's amazement that white suburbanites thought of her as a "poor little black girl" when her family was actually quite wealthy. Just because you're black, Marie says, "you are assumed to be poor and deprived and low-class and so sort of backward." While there were dissenters, METCO parents generally found busing to be a practical way to get their kids a good education and learn how to cross racial borders. In the end, METCO remains one of the few viable models for voluntary school desegregation. By detailing everything from her method of selecting participants to how she recorded interviews even including a copy of the interview protocol Eaton is bidding for serious attention from the social science community. Still, general readers who are seriously interested in race relations or education reform will want to read this book. (Apr.)Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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The Cos Cob Art Colony: Impressionists on the Connecticut Shore
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From the Van Gogh-like strokes of Childe Hassam to Elmer MacRae's near-cubist hollyhocks, The Cos Cob Art Colony: Impressions on the Connecticut Shore offers an in-depth look at a lesser-known American movement. Between 1890 and 1920, artists and writers settled in a coastal section of Greenwich called Cos Cob, as the town shifted from fishing and farming to New York bedroom community, often meeting at the Holley family boarding house on the harbor. An independent scholar and former Metropolitan Museum of Art research fellow, Susan G. Larkin (a longtime Greenwich resident) takes readers through a generous sampling of 78 color and 67 b&w; reproductions of works that are currently hanging at the National Academy of Design in New York and will travel to Houston and Denver later this year.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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Fifty Years of Fashion: New Look to Now
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This exhibition catalog accompanies respected cultural historian Steele's debut exhibit as chief curator of the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). Steele (e.g., Women of Fashion, LJ 10/1/95) offers acute observations about the historic and cultural contexts of fashion trends and fads from 1947 to the present. Interwoven into the superbly written text is a valuable literature study on the subject. Chapters are aptly labeled: "Fashion After the War," "Couture and Conformity: The 1950s," "Youthquake," "Excess" (referring to the 1980s), and "Fin de Siecle" (about the accelerated 1990s). Best of all, readers are treated to over 65 photographs of some of the garments in the museum at FIT. This book should be required reading for students of 20th-century fashion, but it is so well written that lay readers will enjoy it too. Highly recommended.?Therese Duzinkiewicz Baker, Western Kentucky Univ. Lib., Bowling GreenCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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London 1900: The Imperial Metropolis (Yale Nota Bene)
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"A very rich and wide-ranging book. The evocation of a great city is vivid and memorable." --David Cannadine"A work of magisterial scholarship." --Janet Watts, Sunday Times, London
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The Theory of Decorative Art: An Anthology of European and American Writings, 1750-1940 (Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design & Culture)
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Isabelle Frank is an independent scholar living in Chicago.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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The Invention of Peace: Reflections on War and International Order
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"War appears to be as old as mankind, but peace is a modern invention," claimed Sir Henry Maine in the middle of the 19th century. In his short, polemic bookThe Invention of Peace: Reflections on War and International Order,Michael Howarddevelops Maine's argument, and while not completely endorsing it, he convincingly argues that peace "is certainly a far more complex affair than war."At just over a hundred pages,The Invention of Peaceis more of an essay than a book, and its massive historical sweep will undoubtedly irritate some readers. Beginning in A.D. 800, when war "was recognized as an intrinsic part of the social order," it extends to 2000, when "militant nationalist movements or conspiratorial ones" suggest that in the near future "armed conflict becomes highly probable." However, Howard's credentials for writing this type of macro reflection on war and international relations are impeccable. Having fought in Italy during the Second World War, he has held several chairs of History and War Studies, and remains the president of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. His many books includeWar in European Historyand a translation of von Clausewitz's classicOn War.With such qualifications, it is hardly surprising that Howard remains tied to the beliefs of the European Enlightenment, while also acknowledging that "the peace invented by the thinkers of the Enlightenment, an international order in which war plays no part, had been a common enough aspiration for visionaries throughout history, but it has been regarded by political leaders as a practicable or indeed desirable goal only during the past two hundred years." As Howard thoughtfully picks his way through the complex negotiations throughout European history that led to the brief eruption of peace into an otherwise uninterrupted state of war, he hopes that "Kant was right, and that, whatever else may happen, 'a seed of enlightenment' will always survive." Let's hope that he's right.--Jerry Brotton, Amazon.co.uk
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Restless Nights: Understanding Snoring and Sleep Apnea
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"There had to be a very special reason for doctors to agree to spend their nights in a laboratory observing the brain waves of a sleeping person." So Peretz Lavie writes in Restless Nights, his authoritative, highly readable, and personal narrative of the history of sleep research. "Special" are the reasons, insights, and accomplishments of the physiologists and clinicians who appear in the pages of this book: they have helped us to understand the cardiorespiratory, cognitive, psychological, and epidemiologic science involved in breathing disorders of sleep. In presenting a history of sleep-apnea research, Lavie highlights a paradox of modern medicine: that an elegantly elucidated syndrome of repetitive asphyxiation and sleep disruption does not necessarily command the immediate attention of the entire medical and research community, or indeed of patients themselves. If the section entitled "Falling Asleep Holding a Duck," which blends a historical perspective with modern insight to describe periodic breathing and sleep apnea, does not enthrall readers interested in physiology and medicine, then it is not clear what would. Here, Lavie quotes Dr. Richard Caton's observations from 1888 that portray a terrifyingly accurate model of what is indeed common among adults and children during sleep: The thorax and abdomen are seen to heave from fruitless contractions of the inspiratory and expiratory muscles; their efforts increase in violence for about a minute or a minute and a half . . . until at last, when the condition to the onlooker is most alarming, the glottic obstruction yields, a series of long inspirations and expirations follows, and cyanosis disappears. . . . The night nurses state that these attacks go on throughout the night. Lavie's discussion of cardiovascular links to sleep-disordered breathing is particularly compelling and should be eye-opening to primary care physicians and specialists alike. Also well treated are such topics as the epidemiology of sleep-disordered breathing, the development and refinement of treatments (both invasive and noninvasive) for sleep apnea, the future of sleep medicine, and education. The book may also disappoint, for it does not decisively target its audience. The title, subtitle, and associated blurb on the front cover ("Snoring and sleep apnea can be dangerous to your health") address the lay reader. The book, however, neither lists practical recommendations for patients at risk for sleep-disordered breathing nor serves as a consistently satisfying reference for the clinician, physiologist, or health-systems analyst; there are many instances in which the writing tends toward scientifically trivial phrases geared to the lay public. It is also disappointing that the book does not acknowledge the work of scores of clinicians and researchers who have made seminal contributions to our understanding of the physiology, pathogenesis, consequences, and treatment of sleep-disordered breathing. In the end, however, it is clear that much of the exhilarating insight of Restless Nights is fundamental not only to sleep medicine but to all of medicine. All readers who are interested in the optimal practice of medicine in the 21st century would be well advised to take notice.Robert C. Basner, M.D.Copyright © 2004 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved. The New England Journal of Medicine is a registered trademark of the MMS.
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Vermeer and the Delft School (Metropolitan Museum of Art Series)
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This rich and rewarding volume accompanies a wide-ranging exhibition, which opened to deserved acclaim at New York's Metropolitan Museum and is currently on view at the National Gallery in London. Vermeer's popularity has continued to soar in recent years, and this well-deserved recognition is validated in this catalog, which brings 16 of his existing canvases together with contextual information that explains the paintings as more than works of an isolated genius. The book reveals the riches of the 17th-century Dutch town itself, a center for patrons, art dealers, and artists creating both decorative and fine arts. The reader enjoys a neighborhood view of the offerings from the studios of De Hooch, van der Ast, Bramer, van Vleit, and Steen. The excellent essays by Liedtke and his fellow curators at the Met and the National Gallery evoke the artistic life of Delft from 1200 to 1700 and the rich history of the town's influence on Dutch culture. Whether they are looking for an overview of the period in Europe or for detailed information on an individual canvas, library users will find this volume helpful. Destined to become a standard reference, this is among the best museum publications of the last decade. Recommended for all libraries. Doug McClemont, New YorkCopyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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What Are Journalists For?
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"A valuable addition to a meager list of books that take journalism seriously." --Tom Goldstein, New York Times Book Review"This remarkable book is the best statement yet of civic journalism's philosophy, promise, and problems. A must read." --Thomas E. Patterson, Harvard University
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Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew (Yale Nota Bene)
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"This long-overdue study illuminates the rich biographical meaning behind much of Celan's spare, enigmatic verse." --New York"This volume has been long and justly awaited. It is the finest approach to the Celan-world so far available." --George Steiner, Times Literary SupplemenyJohn Felstiner's excellent biography is full…of the poems themselve, both in German and in Felstiner's own excellent English translations. --O Magazine
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Between Two Cultures: Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century Chinese Painting from the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection
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The study of Chinese painting often begins and ends with the classics, considering anything after the middle of the 19th century too contaminated by Western ideas of content and perspective. This book dispels such notions, examining both traditional and modern Chinese painters from the 1860s to the 1980s. Fong (Douglas Dillon Curator Emeritus of Chinese Painting and Calligraphy, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) presents the work and influences of such masters as Qi Baishi, painter of shrimp; Zhang Daqian, whose skill and two years living in the ancient caves of Mogao enabled him to forge perfect likenesses of Tang dynasty works; and Xu Beihong, whose Paris training unwittingly set the stage for the socialist realism that prospered under Mao. The book covers many other 20th-century paintings, all held at the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and chapters on Japanese influence and art under Mao give a comprehensive frame to contemporary Chinese art. Recommended. David McClelland, PhiladelphiaCopyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Age of Delirium: The Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union
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The collapse of the Soviet Union figures among the important events of the latter half of the century. David Satter, a reporter in Moscow for theFinancial Times of Londonfrom 1976 to 1982, recorded with great detail the failings of the Soviet Union during the time and has cast those failings into a telling postmortem on the Communist state. The bulk of his material comes in the form of vignettes from people who suffered through the iron rule and the oppression and bleakness it fostered. Their stories provide personal insights as to why the empire collapsed.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Haute Couture
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Published to accompany an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute, this lavishly illustrated volume provides a survey of the history of haute couture (fashion driven by the artistic expression of the designer rather than the dictates of clients) from its beginnings with the formation of the House of Worth in mid-19th-century Paris to the present-day creations of fashion's major designers. From its inception, haute couture has been closely aligned with modern art, "a fulfillment of mutually agreeing ideas that are contingent upon and wrought on the human body." This synergism can be seen in garments such as Poiret's "sorbet" lampshade gown, influenced by the Orientalism of the 1910s, and Chanel's "little black dress," the archetype of clothing's penchant for social reversal and political change, as well as in contemporary couturiers such as Gianni Versace, whose 1995 evening gown merges old technique and new technology by manipulating industrial-weight vinyl onto a crystalline overskirt evocative of 19th-century silhouette. Authors Koda and Martin, curators at the Costume Institute, have given special prominence to technique, the workshop masteries distinguishing the couture from other visual arts. Highly recommended for all fashion collections.?Marcie S. Zwaik, "Library Journal"Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an alternateHardcoveredition.
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Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia
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This is the single best book available on the Taliban, the fundamentalist Islamic regime in Afghanistan responsible for harboring the terrorist Osama bin Laden. Ahmed Rashid is a Pakistani journalist who has spent most of his career reporting on the region--he has personally met and interviewed many of the Taliban's shadowy leaders.Talibanwas written and published before the massacres of September 11, 2001, yet it is essential reading for anyone who hopes to understand the aftermath of that black day. It includes details on how and why the Taliban came to power, the government's oppression of ordinary citizens (especially women), the heroin trade, oil intrigue, and--in a vitally relevant chapter--bin Laden's sinister rise to power. These pages contain stories of mass slaughter, beheadings, and the Taliban's crushing war against freedom: under Mullah Omar, it has banned everything from kite flying to singing and dancing at weddings. Rashid is for the most part an objective reporter, though his rage sometimes (and understandably) comes to the surface: "The Taliban were right, their interpretation of Islam was right, and everything else was wrong and an expression of human weakness and a lack of piety," he notes with sarcasm. He has produced a compelling portrait of modern evil.--John Miller
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Married to the Mouse: Walt Disney World and Orlando
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Disney World, in its agreement with the city of Orlando and the state of Florida, actually negotiated the right to construct and use a nuclear power plant at the amusement park. True, it has never built one, but according to this well-researched, cogently argued and eye-opening account of the complicated relationship between the Disney Company and the city of Orlando, it's a sign of the high price that Orlando has paid to become the home of "the most popular tourist destination in the world." A privately held corporation, Disney has created what amounts to an independently governed country "a sort of Vatican with mouse ears" within Orlando, says Foglesong, professor of politics at Rollins College. For example, Disney competed for (and won) bond money, which ultimately paid for new sewers to accommodate its own expansion rather than for low-income housing in a county already strapped with the influx of Disney workers. When the Orlando Sentinel ran a series offering "tepid" criticism of Disney's bad-neighbor policy, the paper was banned from the theme park. In his litany of Disney's major and minor infractions, Foglesong never fails to shed light on the nuances of the situation. Even more than a critique of Disney, Foglesong's book takes a fascinating, important and entertaining look at contemporary problems in urbanology, city planning and, certainly, business ethics.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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I, Maya Plisetskaya
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This is much more than an artistic memoir it is a courageous account of an era. Plisetskaya was born in Moscow in 1925, joined the Bolshoi Ballet in 1943, and became one of its most acclaimed prima ballerinas (and one of the best-known in the West), performing into the 1990s. But as she makes clear, her life has been one of daily struggle. Plisetskaya's father, a rising apparatchik in the coal industry, was executed in 1935. Her mother, an actress, was then sentenced to eight years in prison. Taken in by a ballerina aunt, Pisetskaya was allowed to continue her dance training; but a pattern of persecution by authorities had been established. Even after she was well established at the Bolshoi, and despite years of pleading, Plisetskaya was forbidden to tour outside the country until 1959, and then she went under tight guard, always returning home, even during the years of the notable defections of Nureyev, Makarova and Baryshnikov. In Moscow, she was trotted out to perform for visiting dignitaries (Mao, Ribbentrop and Tito among them) and was routinely humiliated and artistically encumbered by a punitive bureaucracy. Plisetskaya says she's unable to put into words exactly why she never defected her marriage to a Russian composer was part of it. Every page attests to bitter, poignant regrets. Her account is sometimes rambling, sometimes garbled in translation; but Plisetskaya makes horrifyingly clear the life of an honored artist in her homeland: the artistic paucity (in contrast with the "Balanchine years" in the U.S.) is one element; the degradation of daily life for Soviet citizens is another; and Plisetskaya, as is her reputation, pulls no punches here. (Oct.)Forecast: Plisetskaya is a major ballet star, and her memoirs will sell well among dance lovers.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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The Coldest March: Scott`s Fatal Antarctic Expedition
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The icy deaths of Robert Falcon Scott and his companions on their return from the South Pole in 1912 made them English icons of courage and sacrifice. Soon, however, Scott's judgments and decisions were questioned, and his reputation became one of inept bungler rather than heroic pioneer. Susan Solomon, senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Colorado, approaches Scott's story from a meteorologist's point of view. She shows that the three weeks from February 27 to March 19, during which the explorers fell further and further behind the daily distances they had to cover in order to survive, were far colder than normal. Unusual blizzards of wet snow had already slowed the party and depleted their provisions and strength. Without these once-in-a-decade phenomena, Solomon believes the party would have returned to its base on the Ross Sea--second after Roald Amundsen in the race to the Pole, but safely. She opens each chapter with comments from a hypothetical modern visitor to Antarctica, presumably to give a wider context to the human drama of the last century, though this reviewer finds them inappropriate. She enriches her narratives of Scott's two Antarctic expeditions with vintage photographs and tables of meteorological data that highlight the explorers' achievements. Their determination was pitted against the worst weather in the world. Scott's story has been told many times before, but its weather information makesThe Coldest Marcha useful addition to the literature.--John Stevenson
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Peace Now!: American Society and the Ending of the Vietnam War
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"Destined to become required reading for university students of U.S. foreign policy." --Peter Ling, Times Higher Education Supplement
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What Is Philosophy?
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"This excellent collection fills an important gap and is strongly recommended to anyone with an interest in the discipline." --William Wainwright, University of Wisconsin
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Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (Yale Nota Bene)
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With this new volume, John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr build upon their groundbreaking work inThe Secret World of American Communismand solidify their reputations as the foremost historians of Soviet espionage in America. InVenona, they provide a detailed study of how the United States decrypted top-secret Communist cables moving between Washington and Moscow. This account, based on information unavailable to researchers for decades, reveals the full extent of the Communist spy network in the 1940s. At least 349 citizens, immigrants, and permanent residents of the United States had a covert relationship with Soviet intelligence agencies, among them Harry White (assistant secretary of the treasury in FDR's administration and the Communists' highest-ranking asset) and State Department official Alger Hiss, whose association with the Soviets had been hotly debated since the moment he was first publicly accused in 1948."The Soviet assault was of the type a nation directs at an enemy state," write Haynes and Klehr. They go on to suggest that Venona's code-breaking "indicated that the Cold War was not a state of affairs that had begun after World War II but a guerilla action that Stalin had secretly started years earlier." Moreover, "espionage saved the USSR great expense and industrial investment and thereby enabled the Soviets to build a successful atomic bomb years before they otherwise would have." Haynes and Klehr deliver what is at once a real-life spy thriller and a vital piece of scholarship. A grand achievement.--John J. Miller--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Image Duplicator: Roy Lichtenstein and the Emergence of Pop Art
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Among the many retrospective texts written in the years following Lichtenstein's death in 1997, this offers an unprecedented and cogent reappraisal of the artist's participation in the pop art movement between the late 1950s and mid-1960s. It also provides valuable insight into the nature of the union between psychology and commerce in both the marketplace and the pop aesthetic of this period. Lobel (art history, Bard Coll.) presents Lichtenstein as a shrewd if occasionally ironic manipulator of lowbrow cultural ephemera who struggled with the paradox of being a painter in the age of mechanical reproduction and who, consequently, transformed elements of mass culture into sly, sometimes self-effacing intellectual puns. Lobel's argument is well crafted and concise, and over the course of five chapters, he entices the reader down several conceptual tributaries branching from his central thesis. He tips his hat to postmodern art historical orthodoxy by employing methodologies and broaching issues now considered de rigueur for art theorists: semiotics, gender issues, and the gaze. Lobel is sparing but effective in his use of illustrations, offering period advertisements, comics strips, and comparisons to works of a similar spirit by his sometime rival Warhol to distinguish Lichtenstein's oeuvre from others' in his milieu. Highly recommended for collections focusing on modern art. Savannah Schroll, Smithsonian Institution Libs., Washington, DCCopyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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Meeting God: Elements of Hindu Devotion
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An anthropologist-turned-believer, Stephen Huyler has dared to cross the line of objectivity and produce an introduction to Hindu religion that combines first-person detail with reverential admiration. Ten years in the making,Meeting Godis the culmination of Huyler's travels throughout the Indian subcontinent, documenting in vivid photographs the panoply of Hindu devotional practices. What distinguishesMeeting Godis its intimacy--through his glossy color photos and vignettes of individual Hindus practicing their rituals, he takes the reader into a world that pulses with the power of faith. The crux of the book ispuja, daily devotional practices that anchor Hindus in the divinity of the universe, whether that person is a farmer, carpenter, engineer, or housewife. The remarkable array of differentpujadon't seem to interfere with modern life in India, and, as Huyler insists, actually enhance it. Given the vacuity of meaning in our own modern world, each page ofMeeting Godis an inspiration to deepen life.--Brian Bruya--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Enemies Within: The Culture of Conspiracy in Modern America
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Historian Goldberg (Barry Goldwater) analyzes "conspiracism" in American history with balance and precision, presenting conspiracy belief as a traditional part of our culture rather than a fringe response from deranged or abnormal personalities. Goldberg discusses a range of examples, from the Salem witch trials, to the abolitionists' slave power conspiracies vs. the Confederates' slave insurrection plots, to the Klan's hatred of African Americans, Catholics, and Jews. However, he focuses his study on five post-World War II conspiracy theories: the Communist fifth column, the belief in the Antichrist, the assassination of JFK, the plot against black America, and the Roswell incident concerning a purported alien attack. Goldberg's writing is clear and vivid, and his willingness to tackle conspiracies emanating from many points of the political spectrum makes his argument more cogent. Underlying his analysis is the view that both the media and, ironically, the government have been instrumental in making these five conspiracy theories (and others) more credible. This important and unusually accessible study is strongly recommended for academic libraries, most public libraries, and large high school libraries. Jack Forman, San Diego Mesa Coll. Lib.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books
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It's difficult to imagine a scholarly enterprise easier to mock than a study of marginalia, the marks left behind by readers making their way through a text. Few readers pause to consider, let alone scrutinize, these bookish graffiti. Still, it is hard not to feel an affectionate regard for Jackson, a professor of English at the University of Toronto, laboring through hundreds of marked-up copies of Boswell's Life of Johnson and earnestly proposing a poetics of marginalia, with its own ethics and standards of practice and its own fusty acronyms (e.g., BEPU, or "Book Enhanced for Personal Use"). She brings to life, insofar as it is possible, the war between marginalia's practitioners and prohibitionists, the "annotators" vs. the "bibliophiles" ("anarchists," as Jackson neatly puts it, vs. "bores"): Wordsworth, for example, enraged his friend De Quincey by cutting open the pages of a new book with a butter-smeared knife. It's fair to say this book is most absorbing in its examples, such as the famous case of Fermat's last theorem (Fermat declared the margin of his book too small to contain the proof, leaving generations of mathematicians to wish they had been on hand with a Post-It). (Mar.) Forecast: Though rather dry, this unique title holds obvious appeal for bibliophiles, book historians, librarians, publishing folk and garden-variety obsessives. The key to its success will be targeted marketing in book-related magazines and handselling by booksellers, the latter a likely proposition.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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A History of South Africa, Third Edition
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This magisterial history throws a floodlight on South Africa's current crisis by examining the past. The absurdity of the apartheid philosophy of racial separatism is underscored by the author's argument (backed with convincing research material) that the genes of the nation's first hunter-gatherers are inextricably mixed with those of modern blacks and whites. The Dutch colonial invaders felt no sense of kinship with the original inhabitants, however: their arrival brought slavery and disease, pulverizing chiefdoms and pastoral communities. From the outset, white settler society was dependent on the labor of slaves and indigenous peoples. Thompson, a specialist in South African history, expertly relates how the Afrikaners--still poor, scattered and disunited in 1854--threw off Dutch and British hegemony to forge their own national identity, forcibly uprooting and relocating millions of blacks. Although the author deems president Frederik W. de Klerk ``like his predecessors . . . wedded to fixed racial categories,'' he sees signs of hope in blacks' increasing economic power and the student revolt against pedagogical brainwashing in the state-controlled schools.Copyright 1990 Cahners Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Geometric Abstraction: Latin American Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection
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Distributed for the Harvard University Art Museums
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The Policy Process: A Practical Guide for Natural Resources Professionals
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"The best primer on how the resource analyst, manager, or activist should understand natural resource policy issues and operate effectively in the policy process."- William Ascher, Duke University
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Paul Signac, 1863-1935
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While Georges Seurat is the best-known pointillist, he wasn't the only one.Signac: 1863-1935reintroduces a tireless advocate of neo-impressionism, a painter whose suburban imagery and leisured lifestyle belied his left-wing political views. Lively essays by scholars and curators portray different facets of Paul Signac's career. Virtually self-taught, he found the catalyst for his mature style in the small-scale brushwork of the slightly older Seurat, but replaced his serene, formal quality with overtly decorative patterning. As a yachtsman, Signac was drawn to marine subjects such as boats gliding on sparkling water at different times of day. After moving from Paris to Saint-Tropez in 1892, he took up watercolor, ideal for painting sunsets. Attempts at translating his political convictions into art (culminating with the monumental figure of a worker wielding a pickax) met with failure. But Signac's brilliance as a colorist is indisputable, infusing each of the 223 plates in this handsome book.--Cathy Curtis
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Origins of the Bill of Rights (Yale Contemporary Law Series)
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When Americans began drafting a Bill of Rights suitable for their new republic, they were actually following longstanding Anglo-American tradition. In a well-researched, though hardly pathbreaking, history, Levy (Blasphemy, etc.), professor emeritus at the Claremont Graduate School, devotes chapters to important protections: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, habeas corpus, prohibitions on bills of attainder, etc. With each topic, he delves into its sourcesAEnglish common law, Enlightenment philosophy, colonial state constitutionsAably characterizing the social and historical forces that influenced the evolution of each right. It's an academic approach that's useful as history even if it solves few contemporary problems. Take, for example, Levy's discussion of the right to bear arms. When ratified, he notes, the Second Amendment created an individual rather than a collective right. But this settles the matter only if one believes that legal and constitutional history stopped in 1789. As recent constitutional theorists (e.g., Bruce Ackerman) have noted, law, including constitutional law, evolves, effectively undergoing amendment through a gradual consensus-building process involving courts, legislatures and the public. Indeed, Levy's own keen historical account illustrates how legal concepts have changed over time. His failure to confront or even acknowledge how this dynamism is at work in contemporary debates renders this book ultimately of only academic interest. (Sept.)Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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British Paintings at the Huntington
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This detailed volume is the first catalog in 65 years of the 168 British paintings at the Huntington Library Art Collection and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, CA. All the paintings are cataloged with standard information; 123 of them also receive a fuller discussion that includes information about the artist, the painting's provenance, exhibitions at which it was shown, and technical details about its physical condition sometimes with illustrations. This is followed by information about the subject whether portrait or landscape in as full and scholarly a manner as could be desired. The entries abound with full-scale footnotes. The quality of the photographs throughout is superb, as is the scholarship. Fully and carefully indexed, the work also includes Bennett's well-written and informative essay, "The Formation of Henry E. Huntington's Collection of British Paintings." This is a splendid scholarly achievement not likely to be superseded as well as a beautifully produced volume that is a joy to use. Editor and catalogers are to be congratulated on a book that belongs in most libraries. Martin Chasin, Adult Inst., Bridgeport, CTCopyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Prints and Drawings
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Accompanying an exhibit at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Drawings and Prints, edited by Nadine M. Orenstein, features the lesser known works of this famous 16th-century Flemish artist. In the introduction and essays, seven scholars, including museum director Philippe de Montebello, Manfred Sellink, Michiel C. Plomp and the editor, explore diverse biographical and artistic craft issues e.g., all that is known for certain of Bruegel's life is that, though he painted peasants, and early biographers dubbed him the "`Peasant Bruegel,'" he was in fact an urban intellectual. The exhibit treats these drawings in a new light thanks to the "transformative insight" of the late Hans Mielke i.e., new attributions to Bruegel or his circle, such as a sketch formerly attributed to Hieronymous Bosch. The book features 274 illustrations (108 in color): Bruegel's 54 works alongside works by his colleagues, predecessors and successors.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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Thoreau's Ecstatic Witness
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Literary students everywhere have read Thoreau's Walden and "Civil Disobedience" and warmed to his widely acclaimed musings on solitude, nature, and protest. But in this richly detailed study, Hodder (comparative literature, Hampshire Coll.; Emerson's Rhetoric of Revelation) pays scrupulous attention to what he considers the religious expression in Thoreau's work (including his journals); thus the use of the word ecstatic in the title. Hodder believes that much of that expression has been overlooked, with disproportionate critical attention being paid to Thoreau's literary, philosophical, and political concerns. He makes a convincing case that Thoreau's various designationsAas a nature writer, man of letters, and social criticAcome into better focus once his religious sensibility is factored into his character and work. As Hodder demonstrates, Thoreau was not a follower of institutional religion, believing fervently that rapture came from experience, not faith. But as an ascetic and a sensualist, he thought the natural world barren without a connection to the human spirit. This work is not always an easy readAit demands some knowledge of the writings of Thoreau and other TranscendentalistsAbut it is certainly worth the effort. Recommended for academic and large public libraries.ARobert L. Kelly, Fort Wayne Community Schs., INCopyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Beethoven`s Piano Sonatas: A Short Companion
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Rosen's prize-winning study The Classical Style was a wide-ranging look at music history. His latest book originated in seminars given to piano students at an Italian festival, and is divided into two sections, "Formal Principles" (considerations of phrasing and tempo, for example) and "The Sonatas" (analyses of the 18th- and early-19th-century sonatas). Rosen points out that though Beethoven wrote his sonatas at a time when such works were meant for amateur performances at home, he consistently made them too difficult for this purpose. He also observes that Beethoven rarely used simple indications of tempo, such as allegro (quickly) or lento (slowly); instead, he saddled his interpreters with complex and debatable instructions like allegro vivace e con brio (quickly, lively, and with gusto). How fast should the opening of the famous Moonlight sonata, which is "often taken at too slow a pace," be played? And what about the knuckle-busting Hammerklavier sonata, about which Rosen notes, "high-minded pianists consider the very fast tempo vulgar... [but] more than anything else, it is an explosion of energy"? Rosen addresses many such practical questions, and, in the accompanying CD, he plays excerpts from some of the sonatas to illustrate his points. Mostly steering clear of the kind of catty comments about performers and fellow critics that pepper his journalism, Rosen keeps his eye on the subject, and the result is measured and sane. A nice complement to, if not a substitute for, earlier books by Timothy Jones, Kenneth Drake and Robert Taub, this book's musical examples and occasional technical language should not turn off Ludwig-o-maniacs. (Mar.)Forecast: Sure to get endless plugs in the tony lit-crit rags where Rosen is omnipresent, like the New York Review of Books, this book will no doubt also benefit from Rosen's penchant for radio appearances as both interviewee and performer.Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies
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"Well-written and -documented." --Amitai Etzioni, author of The New Golden Rule
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Splendid Isolation: Art of Easter Island
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This handsome book is the catalogue for an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art that runs from December 12, 2001, through August 4, 2002.
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Sunbirds: A Guide to the Sunbirds, Spiderhunters, Sugarbirds and Flowerpeckers of the World
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Copublished with Pica Press
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Stephen F. Austin: Empresario of Texas
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Cantrell (history, Hardin-Simmons Univ.) has written the first major biography of Austin, the "Father of Texas," since Eugene C. Barker's Life of Stephen F. Austin (1925). Unlike his predecessor, who gave readers a sterile rendering of Austin, Cantrell seeks to understand this complex individual. The result is a biography in the truest sense as it follows Austin from his childhood to his death. Cantrell examines Austin in the context of his time and place but does not get distracted by the multiplicity of events surrounding the subject of his research. Cantrell's prose is lively and engaging, but ever the historian, he makes excellent use of primary sources in the United States and Mexico. While not all may agree with the conclusions Cantrell draws, e.g., that Austin offered lukewarm support to slavery, this remains a compelling and engaging account that will appeal both to the lay reader and scholar. Highly recommended.ADaniel D. Liestman, Kansas State Univ. Lib., ManhattanCopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Morality and Contemporary Warfare
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"Johnson does a nice job of guiding the reader through the moral intricacies of just war theory. --Virginia Quarterly Review"Johnson['s analysis] exudes wisdom." --Lawrence Freedman, Times Literary Supplement"This is a very good book on an important topic." --J. Bryan Hehir, Commonweal"To those caught between uncritical pacifism and equally uncritical interventionism, Johnson provides an invaluable perspective and sense of balance." --Martin L. Cook, Christian Century
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Candace Wheeler: The Art and Enterprise of American Design, 1875-1900
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". . . superb research, clear argument, and open-minded approach . . . exemplary work . . . sure to be the standard reference . . . for years to come." --Carma R. Gorman, Design Issues[R]ichly illustrated. --Diane Goldsmith, Philadelphia Inquirer
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Bruno Walter: A World Elsewhere
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Using information gathered from thousands of unpublished letters, concert reviews, interviews, and recordings, Ryding, manager of catalog development at Sony Classical, and freelance harpsichordist Pechefsky trace the life and career of Walter (1876-1962), one of the most influential conductors of the 20th century. The biography is deservedly full of praise for its talented subject, but the authors do not hide his faults or suppress the less favorable reviews or criticisms he received during a brilliant career. The book opens with Walter's early successes in turn-of-the-century Germany, where he was aided by Gustav Mahler (who also encouraged him to change his name from Schlesinger) and continues through his expulsion from Europe in the 1930s by the Nazis and his many triumphs in North America. The picture they paint is a vivid one, and the treatment is thorough and well documented. Highly recommended. Timothy J. McGee, Univ. of TorontoCopyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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George I (The English Monarchs Series)
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Yale English Monarchs Series
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Corporate Irresponsibility: America's Newest Export
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In the not-too-distant past, corporations served three constituencies in a fairly equal way stockholders, employees and customers. That paradigm, Mitchell argues quite persuasively, has given way to one overriding goal: profit maximization and the creation of greater shareholder wealth. According to Mitchell, the laserlike focus on short-term profits instead of long-term sustainable growth causes corporate managers to abandon concerns for employees, customers, the environment and society at large to ensure that their company meets its quarterly profit targets, which will keep stock prices rising. Mitchell, a law professor at George Washington University, further argues that managers are forced to place profit maximization above all else, not out of personal greed, but because of the legal structure of modern corporations. To once again make corporations more accountable, Mitchell offers a number of suggestions, including extending corporate directors' terms, requiring companies to disclose figures on a yearly rather than quarterly basis and, in his most original proposal, changing accounting methods to treat employees as assets rather than liabilities. This is an important, provocative book that is sure to stir debate between groups who advocate the need for more corporate accountability and those who see nothing wrong with the status quo.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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Women and Men on the Overland Trail, Revised edition
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"An enlightening study." --American West
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Chardin
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Pierre Rosenberg, the Chardin scholar and President-Director of the Musée du Louvre, had one overriding goal in mind when assembling the exhibition of whichChardinis the catalog: "to present the artist's finest paintings, the most perfect, the most harmonious, the paintings that leave nothing to be desired." The 99 paintings reproduced in this book are a testimony to the success of that endeavor. There are also six essays by Chardin experts and an extensively researched chronology.Chardin's still lifes and genre scenes have been deeply appreciated for centuries for what Rosenberg calls "the grave, silent quality that encourages the onlooker to silent reverie." He is incapable of untruth: his subjects--jugs and bowls, glasses, cherries, housemaids, boys at play, dogs and cats--are painted without a touch of irony, embellishment, or drama.It is painful to report that this volume is extremely disappointing visually, with plates that are either poorly reproduced or reproduced from poor transparencies and are slightly greenish or washed out. Except for details, which do show Chardin's close harmonies and painterly touch, the pictures look flat and dull. Art historians, of course, will see the paintings in the flesh and use this book as only an aide-memoire, but for ordinary, nonprofessional art lovers, the 20-year-old catalog of the great 1979 Chardin exhibition gives a far better sense of the quiet perfection of this subtle artist. Even a pocket book from Abrams' Discoveries series,Chardin: An Intimate Art, by Helene Prigent and Pierre Rosenberg, is far superior. Although its reproductions are minuscule by comparison, they are at least clear and clean, with colors that appear to be close to those of the original works. The little book may be only an hors d'oeuvre, but it has all the flavor that is missing in the full-course meal.--Peggy Moorman
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The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, Second Edition
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"A richly tapestried portrait-narrative... Orsi is to be commended for a truly significant contribution to the annals of American social history." Francesco Cordasco, USA Today "Orsi has fashioned an impressive fusion of the inner histories of immigrant social and religious life." John W. Briggs, American Historical Review
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Whose Freud?: The Place of Psychoanalysis in Contemporary Culture
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This work records the activity of a 1998 symposium at Yale, whose goal was to "assess the status of psychoanalysis as a discipline and discourse in contemporary culture." Reflecting the conference's format, the book is divided into six sections focusing on the legitimacy of psychoanalysis as a science, its various theories of the mind, psychoanalysis and historiography, sexual identity, hermeneutics, and the quality of "truth" in psychoanalytic theory and practice. Each section is composed of an introduction, presentations by the seminar participants (including Judith Butler and Leo Bersani), and discussion. Pulling no punches, Brooks (humanities, Yale Univ.) and Woloch (English, Stanford Univ.) begin with Frederic Crews's scathing, provocative attack on Freud's theories as a science. The other sections provide some equally thought-provoking presentations on such disparate topics as Freud and homosexuality and the "psychoanalysis" of Nazi architecture. Within its broad intellectual scope, this book illustrates the intriguing crossroads of Freud's 19th-century sensibilities with our own. An excellent academic treatment of the relative value of Freud at the turn of the millennium geared to psychology and humanities professionals.DDavid Valencia, King Cty. Lib. Syst., Federal Way, WACopyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Taking Measures Across the American Landscape
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This book gives the impression of being handcrafted, as if each copy were its own special volume. It is a loving appreciation of the land, space, and forms that architects, builders, road crews, and farmers have added to the America that can be seen from above. Corner (landscape architecture and regional planning, Univ. of Pennsylvania) has contributed the essays and commentary that give the book its flow. His drawings are the work of a keen imagination capable of startling points of view. But it is MacLean's aerial photography that forms this beautiful volume, giving heart and light to the land and all that is upon it. The dignity of Iowa farms, the quilted surface of agriculture in North Dakota, and the amazing markings in the Mojave somehow merge to give a sense of a sculpted nation waiting for MacLean to fly over it at low altitude to photograph and glorify. This is a work of pure aesthetics, with some prose to hook it all together, but it will be visually thrilling to library browsers. Highly recommended.?David Bryant, New Canaan P.L., Ct.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions (Yale Series of Younger Poets)
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Lawrence Booth is a vigorous, trash-talking, frustrating and entirely made-up young man from a rural South that's equal parts carnivorous nightmare, Freudian pastoral and deep-fried family romance. Manning, who hails from Kentucky, becomes the latest in the venerable Yale Younger Poets series (now judged by W.S. Merwin) with these sometimes over-the-top, often surprisingly difficult poems about Lawrence's boyhood and youth in a "sweet tobacco, cornmeal, archetypal world." Sonnets, catalogues, shaped poems and non sequitur-filled rambles consider Booth's "gradeschool days," his vivid nights, his television-viewing habits, his explorations on foot, his difficult sister and his comic attacks on his region's heritage. Manning also depicts Lawrence's companions the vicious, overwhelming father Mad Daddy; Red Dog, a faithful dog; Missionary Woman, a love interest; God; the devil; and Black Damon, a young African-American who speaks seven of his own poems (called "Dreadful Chapter One," "Dreadful Chapter Two," and so on) in a deliberately outrageous minstrel dialect ("Red Dog barkie echo plum back to the house"). Manning's mesh of voices, fears and incidents (not to mention his blackface moments) recalls John Berryman's Dream Songs, and Merwin notes the similarities in a perceptive foreword. Yet Manning's adventurously uneven verses bring him close to ambitious Southerners, from Robert Penn Warren to Frank Stanford; his often antirealist forms seek to capture a South many people will find incredible. (Aug.)Forecast: Merwin's third pick for Yale since becoming its judge is also his second Southern-set, book-length sequence in a row, following last year's Ultima Thule by Davis McCombs. Yale's prestigious first-book series reached its peak in the '50s, when then-judge W.H. Auden picked (among others) Ashbery, Hollander, Rich and Merwin himself. But with the right regional and national publicity, this uneven volume could do well.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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L`italiano con l`opera: Lingua, cultura e conversazione
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Daniela Noe is senior associate, Italian Department, Barnard College, and language coordinator, Italian Programme, Barnard and Columbia Colleges. Frances A. Boyd is senior lecturer in language, American Language Programme, Columbia University.
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Agitations: Essays on Life and Literature
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Essayist, reviewer, and editor Krystal (A Company of Readers: Uncollected Writings of W.H. Auden, Jacques Barzun and Lionel Trilling) pulls no punches in dispatching academic critics who view works of literature primarily as "semiotic tracts that reflect all sorts of nasty, royalist, elitist, patriarchal, sexist, and imperialist sympathies." He sees the activities of writing and reading as deeply connected to basic human questions of life, death, religion, value, and taste. In graceful, conversational prose, he both argues and demonstrates his points, easily combining his knowledge of history and philosophy with the personal to give readers a view of an engaged mind. The essays collected here have previously appeared in American Scholar, the New York Times Book Review, and Harper's. The most famous of them, "Closing the Books: A Once-Devoted Reader Arrives at the End of the Story," attempts to come to terms with his own loss of interest in reading. Is it his age, he wonders, or the age? Recommended for academic libraries.Mary Paumier Jones, Westminster P.L., COCopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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The God of Hope and the End of the World
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In the 1990s, Polkinghorne (Belief in God in an Age of Science) met regularly with an interdisciplinary group of scholars to address what Christian theology and scientific inquiry might have to say about the end of the world. In 2000, the group issued an essay collection, The End of the World and the Ends of God, but they also assigned Polkinghorne to write a briefer, more accessible volume about their work for the general reader. The excellence of this book shows that their faith in Polkinghorne as a writer and theologian was not misplaced. Polkinghorne argues that the world will not end with some grand attainment of human perfection, "but in the whimper of cold decay or the bang of fiery collapse." Either alternative "is a challenge to which theology must respond." In the opening chapters, he posits that a credible eschatological Christian theology will include both continuity and discontinuity; in other words, the new world God creates will have some similarities with this one, but it will also be a truly unique creation. This fascinating argument is followed by chapters on biblical precedents for eschatology. Polkinghorne is the first to admit that he is not a biblical scholar, but he does a fine job of crystallizing difficult concepts. He does this not through storytelling or personal anecdotes, but through a careful yet concise explication of ideas. Readers interested in the ongoing explorations of Christian faith and cosmology will not want to miss this volume, particularly since Polkinghorne takes on fellow theology-and-science writers such as Arthur Peacocke.Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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Monastic Visions: Wall Paintings in the Monastery of St. Antony at the Red Sea
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"Bolman makes the arcane accessible and the spiritual meaningful. This is how art history, usually seen as an elitist activity, should be written up in a democratic society." Anthony Cutler, Penn State University Art
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Salvaged Pages: Young Writers' Diaries of the Holocaust
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Zapruder, who works in the education department at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, has done a great service to history and the future. Her book deserves to become a standard in Holocaust studies classes, particularly those aimed at youth or focusing on individuals. The 14 diaries in this anthology most appearing in English for the first time detail the lives of teens and their families, some on the run, some in camps, some in hiding and some during the chilling last days in the ghettoes in Nazi-occupied Europe. Each is prefaced with a biography of its author, information on family background and, when known, his or her fate. Zapruder also provides other facts that would have been known to the diarists and their peers, providing readers with a more complete context. Their experiences and reactions vary widely. Peter Feigl's parents baptize him as a Catholic and send him to church, but eventually are forced to send him from Austria to France. He blames the Jewish-identified teens around him for the circumstances that have ripped him from his parents. In contrast, Belgian Moshe Flinker becomes more attached to traditional Judaism, but increasingly depressed. His last entry, in the fall of 1943, reads, "I am sitting facing the sun. Soon it will set; it is nearing the horizon. It is as red as blood, as if it were a bleeding wound. From where does it get so much blood? For days there has been a red sun, but this is not hard to understand. Is it not sufficient to weep, in these days of anguish?" These writings will certainly impress themselves on the memories of all readers.Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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An Unconventional Family
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"A gripping page-turner of an autobiography." --Grant Jewell Rich, Sexualities"A unique memoir of a marriage astonishingly brave both in its living and its telling." --Carolyn G. Heilbrun, author of Writing a Woman's Life and The Last Gift of Time"A unique, incredibly honest, and smart memoir that is enjoyable and often quite touching to read." --Psychology of Women Quarterly
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The American Paradox: Spiritual Hunger in an Age of Plenty
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In response to Ronald Reagan's famous question, "Are we better off than we were 40 years ago?" The answer would have to be "materially yes, morally no," writes social psychologist David Myers. "Therein lies the American paradox," he continues. "We now have, as average Americans, doubled real incomes and double what money buys. We have espresso coffee, the World Wide Web, sport utility vehicles, and caller ID. And we have less happiness, more depression, more fragile relationships, less communal contentment, less vocational security, more crime (even after the recent decline), and more demoralized children."Myers shuns the label of conservative or liberal, preferring to see himself as a social ecologist who abhors the dominance of material values. In fact, Myers is a visionary who asks important questions, such as why is marriage so difficult to maintain in our culture? Why are so many fathers abandoning families? Are rich people happier than poor people? What is the price we pay for radical individualism? He answers these questions with persuasive statistics and sound advice that cannot be neatly pigeonholed into one political camp or the other. As a result, this is a author with credibility, as he covers crucial chapters such as "The Past and Future of Marriage," "Money and Misery," "Educating for a Moral Compass," and "America's Children."--Gail Hudson--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Leonardo on Painting: An Anthology of Writings by Leonardo da Vinci with a Selection of Documents Relating to His Career
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Yale has published these two books in conjunction with a London exhibition of Leonardo's drawings taken from the British Royal Library. Leonardo da Vinci contains brief biographical and critical essays along with a catalog of the exhibition. The reproductions of the exhibited drawings as well as of paintings by Leonardo (not included in the exhibition) are large and of good quality. An interesting addition is the inclusion of models built from some of Leonardo's designs and computer-generated images illustrating certain of his mathematical, architectural, and perspectival ideas. The book's division of Leonardo's oeuvre into sections (the vortex, the measuring eye, etc.) seems arbitrary and does not prove particularly useful for understanding the work. Still, the accompanying text, which includes well-chosen quotations from Leonardo's writings, is clearly written and suitable for general readers, interested laypersons, and students. Leonardo on Painting is a creation of Kemp and Walker, who have attempted to construct a coherent treatise on painting (never actually presented by Leonardo himself) using selections from the master's many surviving writings on the subject. Kemp acknowledges that this project "involves some measure of conscious violence towards the original sources" and that "In some instances, a single passage on a particular topic has been compiled from as many as half a dozen separate sources." In addition to the heavily edited writings on painting, the book provides translations of letters, memoranda, and documents by or relating to Leonardo. While this work should be of interest primarily to scholars it could also be used by motivated laypersons.- Kathryn W. Finkelstein, M.Ln., CincinnatiCopyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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About Modern Art
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"Sylvester's approach is ruminative and his prose is peppered with wise epigrams and insights." --Martin Gayford, Sunday Telegraph"Sylvester's prose has a sensuous, almost physical dimension to it. --Richard Dorment, Spectator
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Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century
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InHumanity, English ethicist Jonathan Glover begins with the now commonplace observation that the last 100 years were perhaps the most brutal in all history. But the problem wasn't that human nature suddenly took a sharp turn for the worse: "It is a myth that barbarism is unique to the twentieth century: the whole of human history includes wars, massacres, and every kind of torture and cruelty," he writes. Technology has made a huge difference, but psychology has remained the same--and this is what Glover seeks to examine, through discussions of Nietzsche, the My Lai atrocity in Vietnam, Hiroshima, tribal genocide in Rwanda, Stalinism, Nazism, and so on.There is much history here, butHumanityis fundamentally a book of philosophy. In his first chapter, for instance, Glover announces his goal "to replace the thin, mechanical psychology of the Enlightenment with something more complex, something closer to reality." But he also seeks "to defend the Enlightenment hope of a world that is more peaceful and more humane, the hope that by understanding more about ourselves we can do something to create a world with less misery." The result is an odd combination of darkness and light--darkness because the subject matter of the 20th century's moral failings is so bleak, light because of Glover's earnest optimism, which insists that "keeping the past alive may help to prevent atrocities." He cites Stalin's bracing comment, made while signing death warrants: "Who's going to remember all this riff-raff in ten or twenty years' time? No one." At one level,Humanityis a book of remembrance. But it's more than that: it's also an attempt to understand what it is in the human mind that makes moral disaster always loom--and a prayer that this aspect of our psychology might be better controlled.--John J. Miller--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Dreaming in Pictures: The Photography of Lewis Carroll
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Published in conjunction with an exhibit that will travel from San Francisco to Houston, New York, and Chicago through January 2004, this volume features the photographic work of the beloved author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Many of Lewis Carroll's photographs are of young girls he knew, often posed in costume with elaborate scenery and props that convey a sense of fantasy similar to that portrayed in his fiction. Curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Nickel focuses on the subject matter of Carroll's photographs and how it relates to the Victorian preoccupation with symbolism in art. He also discusses some previous interpretations of Carroll's work, including speculations about Carroll's personal relationships with the girls in his pictures. This volume is most suitable as a supplement to either of two other books recently published on Carroll's photographs: Roger Taylor and Edward Wakeling's Lewis Carroll: Photographer, a highly detailed overview of Carroll's life as a photographer, suitable for academic libraries; and Morton Cohen's Reflections in a Looking Glass, a solid introduction to Carroll's photography for public libraries. With thoughtful essays and high-quality reproductions, Nickel's book is also recommended for academic or larger public libraries.Eric Linderman, East Cleveland P.L., OHCopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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The Dynamics of Global Dominance: European Overseas Empires, 1415-1980
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Stanford political scientist Abernethy explains the rise, nature and collapse of European imperialism during a period of more than 500 years. How is it, he asks, that eight European nations, covering 1.4% of the earth's surface, came to control literally most of the rest of the world? Abernethy's analysis of this odd and momentous occurrence combines rich, detailed history with a keen ability to bring meaning to this history. Briefly, he finds that these European nations developed a unique set of institutionsDa strong state, expansionist economies and proselytizing religionDthat could be put to the work of imperial expansion. Together, these institutions would launch assaults not only on indigenous governing elites but also on the economies, cultures and values of the vanquished peoples. No empires before had so thoroughly penetrated the territories they conquered, writes Abernethy. Yet interstate rivalries and, ironically, the growth of Western-influenced nationalism within the colonies would finally bring the European colonial era to an end. The legacy of this era remains, however, and Abernethy spends a great deal of time delineating it as well as pondering the the important question of the morality of European colonialism. Although the text is at times rough going, and Abernethy does not avoid the penchant of social scientists to define terms in the most minute detail, attentive readers with an interest in world history and international affairs will learn much here. As globalization proceeds apace and developed and developing nations both cooperate and collide, an understanding of the origins of this modern global arena is an invaluable lesson, one Abernethy ably provides in a volume that, despite its dry title, will appeal to students of European and world history. (Jan.)Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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No Virtue Like Necessity: Realist Thought in International Relations since Machiavelli
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Jonathan Haslam is reader in the history of international relations at Cambridge University, and fellow and director of studies in history at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
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Georgian London
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Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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God and Philosophy
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"I commend to another generation of seekers and students this deeply earnest and yet wistfully gentle little essay on the most important (and often, at least nowadays, the most neglected) of all metaphysical and existential questions... The historical sweep is breathtaking, the one-liners arresting, and the style, both intellectual and literary, altogether engaging." Jaroslav Pelikan, from the foreword "We have come to expect from the pen of M. Gilson not only an accurate exposition of the thought of the great philosophers, ancient and modern, but what is of much more importance and of greater interest, a keen and sympathetic insight into the reasons for that thought. The present volume does not fail to fulfill our expectations. It should be read by every Christian thinker." Ralph O. Dates, America
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The Art of Mu Xin: The Landscape Paintings and Prison Notes
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Now in his mid-70s, Mu Xin is a reclusive Chinese migr writer and painter, longtime resident in the Forest Hills section of Queens, N.Y., whose work is unfamiliar to most nonspecialists. Since very few of Mu Xin's voluminous writings in poetry and prose have appeared in English, his writing achievement must be taken on faith in English-speaking countries, but this gorgeous, large-format book leaves his painterly skills in no doubt. Accompanying a traveling exhibition of his paintings, it includes nearly three dozen landscape paintings from the late 1970s, just after the infamous Cultural Revolution, as well as calligraphic sheets written as a political prisoner in 1972, 56 b&w; and 54 color illustrations in all. Munroe (Yes Yoko Ono), director of New York's well-appointed Japan Society Gallery, offers a factual preface on the artist, while four experts in the field weigh in with subtlety and intelligence, most notably Yale professor Richard Barnhart, whose chapter, "Landscape Painting at the End of Time," places the painter in the broad context of Chinese art and literature. The paintings, somber in tone and mightily concerned with texture, are very well reproduced here and should win over browsers. University of Chicago professor Wu Hung finds that Mu Xin, although "elusive" as a person and creator, is a greater artist than the recent Nobel Prize-winning writer Gao Xingjian (also a painter) "in terms of both the stylistic subtlety of his painting and the thematic richness of his writing." This is an excellent and unexpected addition to any collection on modern Asian art, and the book is so very wide (at 11 16) that it will easily fill a coffee table by itself.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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Sesame and Lilies
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This edition of Sesame and Lilies has ...rendered a valuable service...Excellent critical essays. --Merle Rubin, Calendarlive.com--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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The Power of Kings: Monarchy and Religion in Europe, 1589 -1715
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This book describes the images of various monarchs in Europe (Russia, Sweden, Poland, the Holy Roman Empire, England, and France), showing how they presented themselves and how they were viewed by their subjects. Monod (history, Middlebury Coll.) uses paintings, sculpture, iconography, and even philosophical works to demonstrate that whereas at the beginning of this period the monarch himself was seen as invested with godlike powers, by the early 18th century the person holding that office was not necessarily seen as holy (though the office of the monarch might still be considered ordained by divine grace). Covering so many countries and so many media makes Monod's argument somewhat murky at times, but on the whole it is well presented. This specialized book is recommended for academic and graduate libraries.AJean E.S. Storrs, Enoch Pratt Free Lib., Catonsville, MDCopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror (Annals of Communism Series)
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Starred Review. Annals of Communism, Yale's acclaimed series, adds another major documentary history to its list. More than 100 documents from the Russian archives are translated, and interspersed with Russian historian Khlevniuk's extensive analysis. The result is a fascinatingly detailed depiction of that horrific symbol of the 20th century, the Soviet prison camp system. Khlevniuk argues that the gulag as it developed from 1929 was a new creation, a specifically Stalinist invention. He weaves together personal accounts by victims with the far more numerous documents written by Soviet bureaucrats. The documents provide surprises and revelations. In the early years, prisoners petitioned and went on strike for improvements in their conditions, sometimes successfully. Officials wrote innumerable memoranda documenting the abysmal food supplies and sanitary conditions and the excessive brutalities of camp guards. At the same time, production derived from forced labor became a major element of the Soviet economy. Attempts to ameliorate the camp situation were thwarted by the ineptitude of the Soviet bureaucracy and the severe crises of the 1930s. Khlevniuk demonstrates how every tightening of the overall political situation, such as the onset of forced collectivization and then the Great Terror, led to a worsening of conditions within the camps. Ultimately, the camps were "almost [the] direct reflection" of the Soviet system and the outcome of decisions made by Stalin and a small group around him. This is an excellent companion to Anne Applebaum's Pulitzer-winningGulag: A History. 39 illus.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Bisexuality in the Ancient World
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"Cantarella presents the ancient evidence in a straightforward fashion, draws insightful comparisons between heterosexuality and homosexuality, and elucidates the larger cultural context of erotic experience. With its wide scope the book speaks to the classicist, the layman with an interest in antiquity, the student of sexuality, and even to the unabashed seeker of piquant anecdotes." John F. Makowski, Classical Journal "An important study that is destined to take its place next to the classic works of Foucault and Pomeroy." Alan Mendelson, History: Reviews of New Books "Offers a valuable, close-in reassessment of intricate evidence, freshly researched, readable, and open-minded." Alan Sinfield, Gay Times "This is a book I recommend for all students of sexology. The book is a treasure trove of both major areas of information that sexologists would do well to master and trivia that they might enjoy knowing." Milton Diamond, Journal of Psychology & Human Sexuality "Easily the best book on the topic." John Buckler, Historian "A valuable contribution to scholarship about sexual orientation." Richard C. Friedman, Psychoanalytic Quarterly "A sexological tour de force... Among students and professionals with even a minimum of sexological curiosity, it will strike a new spark of enlightenment." John Money, Ph.D., Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease "Cantarella's work, based on classical sources, points up the multiplicity of possible social and cultural solutions to the underlying problem of bisexual trends in men... It shows us that every society struggles to formulate ways in which to order the complexity of human sexuality and thus places our current American efforts within a far larger perspective of human history." Jessica P. Byrne, M.D., Psychoanalytic Books: A Quarterly Journal of Reviews "Eva Cantarella's cultural history of bisexuality in the ancient world... is an intriguing and accessible study that draws upon a wide range of primary texts and sources... A fascinating account of the multi-layered nature of bisexuality in ancient times." Paul Johnson, Pink Paper "Ambitious, learned, and thought-provoking... The author displays an impressive command of a wide range of primary and secondary sources, and writes with blessed clarity." Charles C. Chiasson, Southern Humanities Review
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After the Scream: The Late Paintings of Edvard Munch
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[Makes] the case that . . . Munch’s later works . . . add a new dimension to our view of his career. --ARTnews
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The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 1931-36 (Annals of Communism Series)
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"These documents are of singular importance to an understanding of Soviet politics, foreign policy, and economic development of the 1930s. There simply is no more illuminating source on Stalin as politician in the first half of the 1930s than these letters." Sheila Fitzpatrick, University of Chicago
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Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist Movement, 1926-1956
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An extensive investigation of the U.S. communist publications New Masses, Art Front, and The Daily Worker gives this collection of political art real context and bite, and provides an invaluable resource for students of the era's cultural criticism. A British scholar who has written about art in the context of 19th-century urban culture and bourgeois society, Hemingway explores exhibitions at John Reed Clubs and the Whitney Museum, and provides an in-depth analysis of the New Deal's art projects. Anecdotal histories of feuds between artist and editor Stuart Davis and critic Charles Humboldt and a section on the controversy over Anton Refregier murals at the Rincon Annex Post Office in San Francisco (depicting labor struggles) are generously illustrated. Painters Alice Neel, Jacob Lawrence, Jack Levine, Robert Gwathmey and Anthony Toney are well-represented here; Philip Evergood's Dream Catch and Raphael Soyer's Nude in Studio look great. Hemingway's aim here is not formalist criticism-of the four pages devoted to Refregier's murals, one paragraph addresses the work on artistic grounds.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Passchendaele: The Untold Story, Second edition
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"The clearest and most balanced picture yet of a battle whose very name evokes the horror and supposed futility of World War I." John Grigg, The Spectator "This book will appeal to both the scholar and the general public and belongs in every World War I collection." Agnes F. Peterson, History "An excellent, carefully researched, and dispassionate history of the Passchendaele campaign... It must now become the standard scholarly work on the grim battle of Passchendaele, integrating as it does both politics and war." Tim Travers, Journal of Military History "The most wide-ranging and perceptive account of Passchendaele yet written" Robert Cowley, Military History Quarterly "The authors excell in their thorough use of original sources to provide a masterly account... clearly related and supported by admirable maps." Brian Bond, Times Literary Supplement "Lucid and persuasive." E.S. Turner, London Review of Books "An extraordinary investigation of Sir Douglas Haig's ruinous Third Ypres campaign of 1917... This is the most wide-ranging and perceptive account of Passchendaele yet written. This book not only captures the agony of the soldiers' war but, in the measured, understated tone of the best prosecutors, leads us to inevitable conclusions." Robert Cowley, Military History Quarterly "A monument to scholarship, economical and often eloquent writing, and a solid grasp of the real issues involved in World War I.... This is a great book... It is a book that every marine who aspires to higher command should add to his or her library - one that will undoubtedly reward its owner by rereading and rereading." Williamson Murray, Marine Corps Gazette "Without a doubt the best book on the campaign yet published... It is well-researched, well-written, and will keep historians arguing for years to come." Stand To "Prior and Wilson, both distinguished historians, have conducted extensive primary research to provide an account at once both provocative and authoritative" Choice "The authors should be commended for writing a balanced, convincing work that reveals the devastation of the First World War and the failure of military and political leaders to recognise this horror." Virginia Quarterly Review
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Memoirs of a Warsaw Ghetto Fighter
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As a courier protected by his gentile looks and false indentity papers, and as a leader of the daring group of 500 poorly armed, untrained men and women of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB), the author, known as Kazik, helped stave off the Nazi liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto for a month in 1943, an operation the Germans expected to complete within three days. This affecting account recalls the terror and danger of the period and how, after the battle for the ghetto was lost, 19-year-old Kazik led the escape of fighter-survivors through the sewers to safe houses on the Aryan side or to a nearby forest. He later fought with the Polish underground in their unsuccessful 1944 uprising against the Germans to free Warsaw. He and his family now live in Israel. Photos not seen by PW.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Resilience and Courage: Women, Men, and the Holocaust
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"I remember once she got hold of some mildewed flour. Mother baked rolls out of it. Everyone got one roll. And after I finished, I asked her, `Mom, maybe I could have another roll?' And she just started crying." It is details like this that make Tec's book both historically vital and emotionally unsettling. Drawing upon dozens of interviews with Holocaust survivors, Tec (who won a Christopher Award for her 1991 The Lion's Den: The Life of Oswald Rufeisen) has attempted to understand how gender influenced the experience of the Holocaust-a topic rarely treated in comprehensively before. This alone makes Tec's book almost unique, but her amazing skill as an interviewer and accomplished ability to analyze this raw material in a historical context makes this a significant addition to the field. Tec organizes a tremendous amount of personal and historical material succinctly-in such chapters as "Life in the Ghetto," "Leaving the Ghetto," "The Concentration Camps"-while making nuanced connections. She notes, for instance, that, in the early stages of Nazi control, the self-esteem of Jewish men was damaged by new laws forbidding them to work; in the camps men were "more affected by their prewar social standing than women." Often she comes up with surprising data, observing, for instance, that while women frequently and easily took on the "male role" when needed, when Jewish men did have more power (as among partisans in the forests), women were expected to return to their roles as caregivers and sexual partners. While this is a work of powerful emotionality, it is also a groundbreaking study of how gender is inexplicably bound to history and experience.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence
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Often slighted by art historians, tapestries were actually the most widely commissioned figurative art form in Europe in the 1500s. InTapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence, Thomas P. Campbell and other scholarly contributors survey the elaborate woven hangings produced primarily by Flemish workshops for the palaces and cathedrals of Italy and Northern Europe. The authors discuss the designers' careers, patrons' motives, symbolic meanings of the imagery, and stylistic features unique to the labor-intensive medium. Initially, the need to lessen skilled weavers' workloads led designers to arrange elaborately costumed figures in manageable rows. Raphael's cartoons (full-size drawings) for the monumental "Acts of the Apostles" tapestries, commissioned by Pope Leo X, moved the art form into a new era. Flemish designers incorporated Raphael's spatially persuasive treatment of the figure into sophisticated narratives full of anecdotal detail. The 250 color photographs, specially commissioned for this catalog for an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum in spring 2002, vividly illuminate the technical brilliance of these works.--Cathy Curtis
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Zarathustra's Secret
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Author and journalist Kohler has carefully charted the history of philosophy, music and Nazism in well-received translated works like Nietzsche and Wagner: A Lesson in Subjugation and Wagner's Hitler: The Prophet and His Disciple. Now Yale offers this abridged version of a book first published in Germany a dozen years ago, minus an analysis of Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra. Kohler's main assertion is that Nietzsche was gay, or wanted to be and didn't dare to act on it, and was especially tormented as a result. To this end, Kohler recounts a number of unproven assertions, such as that Nietzsche contracted the syphilis that drove him mad in "a male brothel in Genoa." Such speculations can be taken too far, such as when Kohler states confidently that the young Nietzsche enjoyed Lord Byron's poetry because of "Byron's perversions." Perhaps this book's abridgment affected its symmetry, but it lacks the shapely form and persuasive arguments of Nietzsche and Wagner. The clear translation brings passages of neo-Nietzschean ornate writing to life: "Throughout the nineteenth century and far into the twentieth the exiles of Sodom sought a new home in the `warm south.' Nietzsche joined them...." Since no tell-all exists, the book's whole argument consists of approximations and near-misses.Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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Prehistoric Avebury, Second Edition
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"In this beautifully illustrated book, Aubrey Burl combines both archaeological and historical evidence to present an absorbing account of the mysterious stone monuments at Avebury and the life of the primitive people who erected them nearly 5000 years ago." Publishers Weekly "This beautifully illustrated book discusses Avebury today, where one can still wander among these fascinating stones, and relates the destruction of and excavations at this prehistoric site." Science News
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Visiones: Perspectivas literarias de la realidad hispana
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Text: Spanish
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Awakening Lives: Autobiographies of Jewish Youth in Poland before the Holocaust
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"Perhaps this autobiography will change the course of my life. This is something new for me. I have never before examined my life seriously." - from the autobiography of 'Esther', nineteen years old, written in 1939
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Warrior Lovers: Erotic Fiction, Evolution and Female Sexuality
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Darwinism Today Series
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