Book Description
Joscelyn Godwin explores music's effects on matter, living things, and human behavior. Turning to metaphysical accounts of the higher worlds and theories of celestial harmony, the author follows the path of musical inspiration on its descent to Earth, illuminating the archetypal currents that lie beneath Western musical history.
Customer Reviews:
A very interesting book.......2005-07-20
A very interesting book, that will attract the attention of both music lovers and philosophy fans.
Its analysis starts from the very Pythagorean theory of the Harmony of the Spheres and extends to the beginning of last century.
Analysing each theory, the book provides the opportunity to people without any profound knowledge of music of philosophy, to understand some of the theories that shaped western music through the ages.
An Incredible Work.......2004-12-29
Though this may seem an unnecessary addition to my review, Professor Joscelyn Godwin is a professor I have had/will have again at Colgate University, and a man of utmost scholarship. That said, this book suffers from one minor flaw, not worth removing a star: his archaic writing style. Godwin's ideas are intelligent, thought-provoking, and well-presented...but his writing style is the kind that can make the average reader's eyes glaze over. Of course, the "average reader" will not be reading this book, but a bit of accessibility stylistically never hurt anybody...then again, who am I to judge Professor Godwin? He was just grading my papers, hehe.
Anyway, this book is brilliant. Vast amounts of information are thrown at the reader in a manageable and coherent fashion, and all the chapters follow a logical course of thought which supports the ultimate thesis that the universe we live in is a musical one, dominated by harmonies and melodies of untold beauty, not equations of mind-boggling complexity. His own 4 chapters are excellent forays into speculative music, presenting scientific evidence of the effects of music in the universe, as well as anecdotal/mythological excerpts to support the idea. At times, it seems as though fact and fiction are indistinct, and this would be an accurate view. But even Godwin himself notes this in Chapter 2. The ultimate relevance is that, whether fact or fiction, Godwin has touched upon some kind of truth (in my opinion), which his scientific evidence backs up, and his anecdotal/mythological evidence presents to us.
The final section is the clearest description of complex musical philosophies I have yet found. Certainly the scales and tone-zodiacs (not to mention ideas) he presents are hard to decipher, but he explains them well in layman's terms, so even without a music degree, one can figure out the gist of what is going on. Godwin's own Harmony of the Spheres sourcebook includes much of this in even more detail, some more clear, some less, but this is a great quick guide to many confusing musical philosophies and concepts. Truly mind-blowing stuff if you ask me, especially the stuff on Kepler and the last several pages of the book...
Ultimately, this book is a fantastic read, one that will make you question your existence, the realities you perceive, the nature of myth, and the power of music. Godwin opens minds...but try to get the 87 edition used, it has 2 passages he left out of the 95.
5 Stars. Without Question.
A Starting Point for Musicians.......2002-12-11
This was the book which started my continuing quest for information regarding the foundation of music. It is a difficult read ONLY because one needs a huge background covering many individuals--Pythagoras, Kepler, Fludd, Hermes Trismegistus, Gurdjieff, the theosophists Blavatsky, Steiner, and Scott--all of whom I had but scant knowledge prior to reading this book. Godwin covers a wealth of information but only touches briefly on each: cosmology, the monochord, music of the spheres, temperment. I have reread this book several times; whole paragraphs are underlined. If you realize something is seriously wrong with the way music is presently used and abused by society, this book may be a starting point for you as it was for me six years ago.
Average customer rating:
- Great book dumb premise
- I love Mark Beamon and this book is the best one of his stories yet!
- This is Entertainment !
- Entertaining But Not Riveting
- smart, sassy, complex and totally enjoyable
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Sphere of Influence
Kyle Mills
Manufacturer: HarperAudio
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Free Fall
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Rising Phoenix
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Fade
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Storming Heaven
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Smoke Screen
ASIN: 0060520078 |
Book Description
Mark Beamon has always been an unconventional FBI agent -- and years of putting truth ahead of protocol have him languishing in a dead-end job in the Bureau's Phoenix office. But before he can officially be put out to pasture, our nation's war against terrorism pulls him back to the front lines.
Videotapes arriving at television stations across the country bear a terrifying message: A terrorist cell inside the United States possesses a rocket launcher and will begin attacking civilian targets within days. As panic takes hold, the FBI calls on Beamon for one last assignment. Suspecting a connection between the Mob and these fanatics, he is sent undercover to meet a Mafia don who might have information concerning the terrorists.
That simple meeting goes horribly wrong when Beamon's partner is executed after his cover is blown. Barely escaping with his life, Beamon is determined to find the source of the leak and, more important, in one final act of self-destructive heroism, to exact revenge.
As he spirals into a world of government corruption, murder, and betrayal, Beamon comes to know the mysterious Christian Volkov -- a master criminal with seemingly limitless power. Soon it is clear that only through Volkov will Beamon be able to avenge his friend's death and unravel the conspiracy threatening his country.
Performed by Michael Kramer
Customer Reviews:
Great book dumb premise .......2007-08-13
I loved the book, the characters, etc. I randomly grabbed this book off the shelf to read nad wasn't disappointed.
I have 2 criticisms:
1. The whole concept of a rocket launcher shutting down the economy was (to my naive mind) dumb. Maybe it is a realistic option, but whatever. It didn't take away from the book at all.
2. Everything seemed to go right for the protaganists.
But I still enjoyed it, and would recommend.
I love Mark Beamon and this book is the best one of his stories yet! .......2007-04-10
I've "read" audios of several other books by Kyle Mills -- Rising Phoenix (2 tapes a bit too abridged), Free Fall (four tapes, great abridgment!), Storming Heaven (unabridged!). I've liked them all and marveled at the ideas underpinning the plotlines and Mark Beamon's brilliant strategies, but this is the best so far. I love Mark Beamon. I can see someone this intelligent lacking people-dealing skills and being mired in the bureaucracy. But when he can escape the box, can he ever think outside it! And what's almost as wonderful as Mark Beamon's mind is his humor - in the midst of dire situations. What a hysterically funny plan for ensuring the mob boss could escape! What a spectacular criminal he became!!! I don't know when I smiled so much over a nonstop action page-turner.
This is Entertainment !.......2006-05-21
Although as stated in previous reviews, the plausability of this book does tend to be streched quite a bit, that does not subtract from the entertainment value of this book. Like his previous four novels, this book moves at a very quick pace, has engaging characters, and a plot line that will have you examining your morals and values. I wish Hollywood had the guts to adapt this novel to film as this would make a highly entertaining movie and would be very original as well. With the moral ambiguity of this book however I know that will never happen. Once again Kyle Mills has written a very clever and unique thriller. If you are looking for a very solid and entertaining thriller that will make you look at the world a litte differently- then you should enjoy this book.
Entertaining But Not Riveting.......2005-12-22
I read "Sphere of Influence" based on a friend's recommendation. At first, I was disappointed because the novel starts out slowly. But by page 100, it picked up. Before long, I couldn't put it down. And by the end, I truly enjoyed it.
Is it always realistic and plausible? No. Other reviewers have severely criticized the novel for that. But it's a spy/mob/FBI novel. How realistic do you expect it to be? The better question is whether the story is entertaining. The answer to that is yes, absolutely.
If you want to lose yourself in a good guy/bad guy novel, then you'll enjoy Sphere of Influence. But if you want something realistic, then you may want to look elsewhere.
smart, sassy, complex and totally enjoyable.......2005-12-03
Kyle Mills is a great read, especially when it involves our anti-hero Mark Beamon.
Great characters in most all his books...with the exception of "Smoke Screen"...which was not one of my favorites.
Well defined and believable are terms I would use for the plots for ALL his books, but as with most authors, some are better reads than others.
L.Burnett
Book Description
The man and the idea that created modern science, as seen by one of today's most celebrated writers.
In 1543, the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus lay on his deathbed, his just-published masterpiece On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres in his hands. At that time, religious doctrine and common sense dictated that the earth ruled the universe, with the sun, moon, planets, and stars all rotating around it. By putting the sun at the center of that cosmology, his book fomented another kind of revolution—a scientific one—that would lead to a completely new view of the universe, and humanity's place in it.
As contemporary cosmologists explore the universe's vastness and the nearly insignificant role we play in it, the repercussions from Copernicus's radical step continue to resound. With the energetic prose and powerful intelligence for which he is known, William T. Vollmann provides an enlightening and readable explication not only of Copernicus's book but also of Copernicus's epoch, and the momentous clash between the two. 20 diagrams.
Customer Reviews:
The Universe Screams.......2007-07-20
I completely understand the negative reviews this book has received. But I would like to defend this book, which I believe is worth the time and effort.
This is a disappointing book if you are reading it for the wrong reason. The wrong reason is if you are reading this book as an astronomy buff who wants to learn more about Copernicus. Again, that is a very understandable mistake to make. By all appearances, it looks to be a serious academic discussion of the work of Copernicus and its role in the scientific paradigm shift.
The right reason to read this book is not as an astronomy buff but as a William T. Vollman buff. I can't get enough of Vollman's writing. And he can't seem to stop writing so it's a good match (this is a writer, for example, who has completed an over 3,000 page essay on the nature of violence). Vollman has the gift of being able to encompass the full depth of the human experience in every sentence he writes. When he writes of ecstatic happiness, he manages to imbed it with hints of cruelty and suffering. When he writes about tragedy and death, there are twisted traces of sweetness and cathartic joy.
I'm a fan of the history of science and good science writing too. And while this book might not be the most straightforward way to learn about Copernicus, there is factual information here about Copernicus' "On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres." We are also given Vollman's meditations on the nature of scientific revolutions and the way science as a process will always be hampered by human imperfection, by our individual investments in our beliefs, and by the stubborn drag of institutional momentum. "'Revolutions' was profoundly dangerous in its epoch, and hence profoundly necessary."
Why would Vollman take on this task? He tells us this book is the result of an "exercise in explicating a subject slightly beyond my intellectual competence." But, when he marvels at the effort, "the immensity of the force required" and the "solitary years" behind Copernicus' work, we get a sense of the parallel process driving Vollman's own desires to nudge the universe.
Very Disappointing.......2006-08-09
I bought this book with high hopes of finding an interesting and illuminating look at how Copernicus revolutionized astronomy. I was so disappointed that I did something I virtually never do: after about 90 pages, I put the book away with no intention of finishing it. Vollmann is a writer of note, but in this case his writing is so mannered and his exposition seemingly so convoluted that the reader quickly grows fatigued. At least, this reader did.
Snoozefest.......2006-07-08
This is the most uninteresting book on science or a scientific personality that I have read in recent times. I was looking forward to reading about the middle ages, the environment in which Copernicus grew up, the scientific world view at the time, the social mileu, what Copernicus himself was like, what his religious beliefs were, how he arrived at his conclusions, and what his book meant in terms of courage and conviction in that time. And, of course, a lot of actual science.
Instead we get such hard to read, boring, insipid prose dissecting the text of his work that it's a real effort to turn each page. I felt like giving up at every turn till I was half-way through but only sheer will and expectation that it would get better kept me going. But I gave up at the half-way mark.
I had learned very little that stayed with me and I had hardly enjoyed it. For those interested, Bill Bryson's "A short history of nearly everything" is one that succeeds quite well at this attempt to dispense science to the laymen.
save your money and time.......2006-06-16
If you are interested in what Copernicus did, save your money and time and don't buy this book. Instead, get ahold of Thomas Kuhn's masterful account "The Copernican Revolution".
This book is one of a series in which non-scientists present popular accounts of mostly great episodes in science. I say mostly great because there seems to be a certain amount of political correctness in the choice of scientists to write about in the series. But I digress.
Some of the books in this series are successful, for example the one by Madison Smartt Bell on Priestley, Lavoisier, and the chemical revolution. But when you have fiction writers expounding technical subjects, there is potential for trouble, and that is what we get with Vollmann's book on Copernicus.
Vollmann's explanations of the technical aspects of Copernicus' work are superficial and hard to grasp. Kuhn is much better. Vollmann also has a complusion to say snotty things about everyone involved, about their thoughts, motives, habits of mind. One would think that the ancients who constructed early science and astronomy were a bunch of idiots who had to wait for Copernicus to come along, who of course was a dolt because he was "obedient" to Aristotle for the most part, and was incapable of writing clearly to boot. Kuhn is incomparably better at explaining the philsophical, religious, scientific, and historical contexts in which the ancients, Copernicus, and the other early moderns worked. For example, you get a real sense of why the ancient earth-centered system was the reasonable system, that the ancient heliocentric precursors of Copernicus didn't have much in the way of evidence or reason on their side. You get a sense from Kuhn of just what it was that made the heliocentric theory attractive to Copernicus -- the changing context of observational astronomy, and above all the clarity which the heliocentric view gave to the matter of the oddities of the motion of certain of the planets.
If you really want a sense of the greatness of ancient scientific thought, of ancient astronomy, of the magnificence of the accomplishment of Copernicus and his followers in the modern scientific revolution, get ahold of Kuhn's book.
revolution #1.......2006-02-24
It's interesting that so many of the defining moments in history involved Uncentering something from something else. For instance, Thomas Willis realized that the seat of reason and intelligence was neither the heart nor the soul, but a lump of jelly in the skull. Darwin first figured out that the homo sapiens is just one twig in the tree of life. And before Willis and Darwin there was Copernicus, who is credited with discovering that the Earth, far from being the center of the universe, revolves around the sun along with all the other planets.
There's something about human psychology that resists Uncentering, and back then the gecocentrists had mountains of religious and philosophical text to back them up. Needless to say heliocentrism was an unpopular idea, and in 16th century Europe people with unpopular ideas were burned along with their books. Copernicus was spared this fate, partly because of an apologetic (and unauthorized) preface, and partly by the fact that he died of natural causes shortly after the publication of his book in 1543. Copernicus's successors, Bruno and Galileo, ended up taking a lot of the flak.
William T. Vollmann is an excellent writer, and he does a fabulous job of summarizing Revolutions. Using limited astro-jargon and a few figures, Vollmann explains how Copernicus calculated the positions and trajectories of the planets, often arriving quite close to modern estimates without the benefit of a telescope or even binoculars. He also describes how Copernicus had to grapple with the prevalent Ptolemaic system and its philosophical roots. Remarkably, Copernicus, despite his revolutionary worldview, could never bring himself to abandon the philosophical tradition that valued circles for their asthetic appeal. His heliocentric system thus featured circular orbits, and was consequently almost as complicated as Ptolemy's geocentric model. It would be another 50 years before Kepler cleaned up the mess by introducing elliptical orbits to the heliocentric model.
In the end Copernicus was successful in uncentering the Earth. This was a real breakthrough, and not just because he was right about heliocentrism. The Uncentered viewpoint is just the idea that things in the universe can be studied objectively and empirically, without recourse to mysticism. Today we just call it science.
Average customer rating:
- Gotta be smart to like this one!
- Strategic Supremacy
- Silly
- Strategic Supremacy
- For startups and small businesses
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Strategic Supremacy: How Industry Leaders Create Growth, Wealth, and Power through Spheres of Influence
Richard A. D'aveni ,
Robert Gunther , and
Joni Cole
Manufacturer: Free Press
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Hypercompetition
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ASIN: 0684871807
Release Date: 2001-12-04 |
Book Description
Are upstart competitors taking deadly aim at your company's products and markets? Richard A. D'Aveni, author of the famous attacker's handbook Hypercompetition, presents coun-terrevolutionary strategies and tactics that any industry leader or established company can use to defend itself against revolutionaries, disrupters, or hypercompetitors. The secret lies in making the rules, not breaking them, D'Aveni says, because rule makers still rule. Arguing that "profits and prosperity come not from revolution but stability and orderly change," D'Aveni presents a commanding framework that will enable any resource-rich or clever defender to gain Strategic Supremacy by being first to define the playing field.
D'Aveni demonstrates how global powerhouses such as Disney, Microsoft, and Procter & Gamble have achieved preeminence by reconceptualizing their product portfolios as powerful competitive arsenals he calls "spheres of influence." Essentially a new way to compete by restructuring portfolios around a core geographic/product market, spheres enable any company to influence the behavior and positioning of rivals. In immensely readable prose, D'Aveni describes how prevailing spheres of influence can be used to create legal business equivalents to a "concert of powers" and other industry structures that mix cooperation with competition. Just one of the potent functions of a corporate sphere, D'Aveni shows, is to contain competitors of equal size (as NBC contained ABC). Spheres can also be used to stabilize an entire industry's global power system.
A glance at the detailed table of contents will provide a sense of the wealth of new information contained in this essential handbook of global warfare, including "how-to" tools the reader will need to measure and map the pattern of competitive pressure in any industry and to interpret the meaning and strategic implications of these pressure patterns for his or her position within the industry's power hierarchy.
Customer Reviews:
Gotta be smart to like this one!.......2003-12-22
This book take the "core philosophy" one step further. You gotta be a strategy geek though to really understand it.
If the wonderful book BUILT TO LAST taught you how to work from the core, then this book teaches you how to protect your core.
This book is revoultinary because the author really sees things in a new way.
This book has helpt me understand me and my competitors. I understand what the core of my business is, and my competitors, the diffrence comes how we interact and work from the core ........it proves how complex business strategy really is. This book helps you undertand it!
Strategic Supremacy.......2002-10-25
Both in style and content this is a heavily theoretical, academic work. The concept of spheres of influence does little to advance the discussion beyond what could be achieved using conventional portfolio models and competitive theory. The constant reliance on historical, non business related examples only increases the abstract nature of D'Aveni's argument.
D'Aveni is unable to provide examples of companies who have followed the approach he describes and thus his argument is weakened by a lack of coherent or consistent case studies. He is forced to rely on a series of vignettes that attempt to justify small parts of his argument.
As an academic exercise in reviewing similarities across social, military and business history, Strategic Supremacy offers some interesting insights. As a tool for understanding the competitive environment and developing strategies it does not, in my opinion, offer a great deal that current tools cannot provide.
Silly.......2002-04-08
I did not find this book useful, instructive, or even interesting. There is something about these high-brow academics that just seems to make them incapable of grasping the real world. I'm sorry but this book read like it was written by a junior in business school on the night before it was due.
I have read virtually every book there is on business strategy - this one rates as one of the worst.
Strategic Supremacy.......2001-12-15
Transcends the simplistic Chicken Little strategic approaches that recommend you blow yourself up to save yourself in the face of change and chaos. Rather than assuming the sky is falling, D'Aveni reveals, through wisely analyzed cross-industry and longitudinal studies, how the underlying character of firms can lead to startlingly successful and varied approaches for marketplace triumphs.
Dr. Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld,
Associate Dean, Yale School of Management,
& Founder and CEO, The Chief Executive Leadership Institute, "The CEO College"
For startups and small businesses.......2001-12-13
This book was incredibly readable. At times, even witty. It provides a big picture context but, at the same time, puts business trends and examples in a context so you can see whether they are really applicable to your company or situation. As someone who runs a startup, too much theory can bog me down so I liked that each chapter also included practical applications and checklists like, for example, ways to rethink your portfolio or to reduce your vulnerability. I guess my overall take is that Strategic Supremacy has an agenda that is bigger than just promoting a new, one-size-fits-all business strategy. It makes it very clear how defined and yet dynamic any company has to be right now - and it provides a very practical template for breaking away from traditional thinking and looking at my business and my industry in a new way.
Book Description
What passes for political discussion in conventional circles rarely runs the gamut, even from A to B. To probe the deeper meanings of power requires inquiry beyond the vapidity of would-be Presidents, in Britain as well as the US. Fiction has traditionally been an alternative container for such ideas, sometimes a soapbox, sometimes a sanctuary, but always available and frequently used. Many have seen the meeting between literature and politics as necessarily fraught. Norman Podhoretz examined the intersection under the rubric "The Bloody Crossroads". Christopher Hitchens, in this sparkling engagement with novels and their authors, pursues a different approach. Taking inspiration from Shelley's description of the poet as an "unacknowledged legislator", he shows that while the encounter between writers and those in power is not always smooth, it generally embodies a dialectic that is well worth pursuit. Hitchens provides rich evidence that his own sallies as a political journalist, so effectively deployed with the publication of the best-selling No One Left to Lie To, are nourished by a close engagement with a broad sweep of novelists. Here Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal's encounters with American revolution are scrutinized in interview; George Orwell's role as a fulcrum between left and right is carefully weighed; an appraisal of the fatwah issued against Salman Rushdie becomes a meditation on the West's misunderstood encounter with Islam; Ernest Hemingway is defended against the vagaries of fashion; and Hitchens's delicious literary taste skips along a line from Oscar Wilde and P.G. Wodehouse, through Philip Larkin and Patrick O'Brian, to Walter Mosley,Tom Wolfe and Susan Sontag.
Customer Reviews:
Outstanding Effort.......2006-02-05
Christopher Hitchens synthesizes his daunting knowledge of politics with his love of fine literature and letters in Unacknowledged Legislation, arguably his best collection of essays to date. Hitchens seeks to bridge the gap between art and politics through a critical review of the major English-speaking author's political views in the 20th century. Perhaps this critical effort could be construed as showboating as Hitchens' profession is political journalism, and this is one of his few collections which fits squarely into the literary criticism section. However, Hitchens is a fine writer and he knows his literature as well as anybody still living.
In this collection, we get a wonderful set of essays about Oscar Wilde and his contribution to the art of play-writing and support for socialism followed by his horrendous victimization as a homosexual. There's a passage from this section that I cannot resist quoting, "Wilde was able to be mordant and witty because he was, deep down and on the surface, un home serieux. May his memory stay carnation-green. May he ever encourage us to think that the bores and the bullies and the literal minds need not always win. May he induce us to rise from our semi-recumbent postures" (pg. 9).
Hitchens proceeds to run through nearly all of the crucial English writers of our era. He of course writes about Orwell, which I thought was a mute point after his Why Orwell Matters, but hey, the guy loves his Orwell. He discusses the anti-Semitism and fascism in T.S. Eliot, the racism of Rudyard Kipling, the historical depth of Gore Vidal, the heavy-handedness of Norman Podhoretz, Allan Bloom's influence on Saul Bellow, and of course, his solidarity with Salman Rushdie upon the declaration of the fatwa among Islamic Jihads, an action for which Hitchens rightfully boasts.
Hitchens also provides critical summaries of the arch-sensationalist Tom Wolf, and hack, Tom Clancy. He offers simply biting criticism of the former, and much needed as Wolf as enjoyed ludicrous financial and critical success for his quasi-journalism over the last few decades. Hitch examines Wolf's reliance on the cliché, and the cultural and racial stereotype for the sake of provocation. Clancy, while less deserving of a critical review than Wolf, is quickly wrapped up in a body bag and tossed overboard by Hitch.
Unacknowledged Legislation may be Hitchens' finest blend of the political and the literary, and it may be the best example of his prolific gifts. Don't miss this volume.
Buy it if you're interested in modern English literature........2004-06-29
In this book can be found various articles previously published by different magazines by the famous political comentator Christopher Hitchens. Here we see another side of "Hitch", that of the critic of modern English literature, ranging from the witty 19th century plays of Oscar Wilde (whom he admires), to the leaden prose of the neo-conservative Norman Podhoretz (whom he most certainly destests). Even if you don't always agree with him (I find his views on religion repugnent) you don't have any appreciation of the English language if you don't get SOMETHING out of this book. As a student of the history of ideas I was fascinated by his account of Isaiah Berlin, and there are similar riches here for anyone interested in anglophone writing from the late 19th century until the turn of the current millenium. This is a fascinating book by a great prose stylist.
A very different Hitchens.......2001-11-29
I recommend this volume to my friends not only as a great collection of literary essays but as a rare event for Hitch-watchers: for most of the book, Christopher Hitchens is not kvetching! Granted, he gets in some very nice digs at Right-wing ideologues Tom Wolfe and Norman Podhoretz,and manages to include a laughably ignorant piece on the Ebonics debate, but the majority of the essays here are encomia to authors whose writing and political actions the Hitchster admires! It's uplifting, informative, and very moving. Oh, Hitchypoo's usual detractors will come up with the usual non sequitors: he doesn't like religion, he whitewashes George Orwell's sins, he fails to distort a rumor spread by Frank Harris about Oscar Wilde, he's abonded his old political loyalties since he wrote this book. But Unacknowledged Legistlation will remain a generous and valuable work, respected by all who care about literary courage.
Brilliant but rancid.......2001-07-17
Chrisopher Hitchens gives ground to no one (except to his brother by whom he is regularly bested) but I thorougly agree with the previous reviewer. There is a hole in Christopher's heart somewhere. Not only does he not understand the religious impulse(escpecially the Catholic Confession) but he writes history in a brilliantly polemical but incomplete way--he does not give the whole story. One example: Wilde his favorite comes off as a hero which he was. But Hitchens neglects his constant betrayals of his wife--as though that did not figure ar all in the calculus of a life. He also neglects Wilde's refusal to engage the Dreyfus affair. Indeed and you can look it up Wilde loved to dine with Count Esterhazy one of the causes of Dreyfus' torment, a torment (and I say this carefully) besides which Wilde's torment pales. Hitchens rightly points to Jean Jaures as a socialist who combined politics with humanity. Alas Hitchens is no Jaures. Having sad all this I must admit I almost gave this book 4 stars. Hitchens writing is always superb and his insights eccentric and provacative. But here the flavor is a bit rancid. The stories are more complex than Hitchens paints them and he should know that.
The Funny Man stumbles.......2001-04-13
I miss the old Christopher Hitchins, the comic genius who liked to call himself a Leftist while bragging in the pages of 'Vanity Fair' about how much the meals he consumed with Martin Amis cost. The irrepressible wit who could always be counted on to rouse Edward Said to bigger and better lies. The man who volunteered to betray his friends to the Kenneth Starr Committee. The one person who was never afraid to take Charles Heston on in a televised debate.
Where many of my fellow progressives look on Hitchins as an embarrassment on par with Naomi Wolfe or David Foster Wallace, I've long felt they missed the point. For some time now Christopher has been on a mission. And as such he hasn't been afraid to come across as a buffoon. In our irony-saturated age perhaps that's a blessing.
When he first hit our shores, Hitchins was dismissed as an Alexander Cockburn clone. An industrious hack who tried to palm off his middle-class Brit snobbery and anti-Americanism as a Marxist critique. A lesser man might have quite at that point, but Hitchins pressed on. He adopted Gore Vidal as his new hero. Knowing he could never match Vidal's biting wit, he wisely decided to go the other way. He embraced the role of the clown. He lampooned all the he found ludicrous in himself and by extension the politics he ostensibly advocated. It's as a clown that we'll always love Christopher.
Alas, in his latest, shockingly tedious volume the author seems to have forgotten the grease paint, the giant shoes and the red rubber nose he's wearing. All too often the shameless name-dropping, the fulsome self-congratulation, the omnipresent and inexplicable smugness and bluff literary judgments that constitute his ongoing oeuvre are presented without the grotesque exaggeration of his past satire. It's almost as if he's forgotten the joke.
Where once a reader sympathetic to the Left was begrudgingly forced to laugh at the ludicrous figure Hitchins had made himself out to be -- and thus found herself ultimately pondering the serious question of how best to enact a progressive agenda in American and the greater world without it in any way resembling anything Christopher Hitchins represents or exudes -- she now just finds herself getting exasperated. Exasperated and very, very sleepy.
A grave disappointment. Here's hoping it's an aberration.
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Spheres of influence
Sydney Morrell
Manufacturer: Duell, Sloan and Pearce
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
General
| Europe
| History
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: B0007DYDBM |
Book Description
A brilliant reinterpretation of the negotiations between Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin that divided Europe and laid the foundations for the cold war. Gardner argues that the quest for territorial agreements began at Munich and culminated at Yalta, and that FDR ultimately settled for them to maintain Allied unity in forging the peace. A tour de force [by] one of America's most distinguished diplomatic historians....This is excellent history. --Stephen E. Ambrose, Foreign Affairs
Book Description
This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University LibraryÕs preservation reformatting program.
Books:
- Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World: Finding Intimacy With God in the Busyness of Life (Revised Edition with New Bible Study)
- Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes (Baby Board Books)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- Honor Under Siege
- How to Burn Down the House: The Infamous Waiter and Bartender's Scam Bible by Two Bourbon Street Waiters
- I'll Be Watching You: Inside the Police, 1980-83 (Taschen Artists Edition)
- I Love A Mystery: Old Time Radio Shows
- I Only Say This Because I Love You: Talking to Your Parents, Partner, Sibs, and Kids When You're All Adults
Books Index
Books Home
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