Book Description
Dr. Bill Brockton, the founder of the world-famous Body Farm, is hard at work on a troubling new case. A young man's battered body has been found in nearby Chattanooga, and it's up to the talented Dr. Brockton to assemble the pieces of the forensic puzzle. Brockton is brought into the case by the rising star of the state's mechanical examiners, Jess Carter.
Just as they're on the verge of breaking the case open, events take a terrifying turn. Brockton has re-created the Chattanooga death scene at the Body Farm, but a killer tampers with it in a shocking way: placing another corpse at the setting, confusing authorities and putting Brockton's career and life in jeopardy. Soon Brockton himself is accused of the horrific new crime, and the once-beloved professor becomes an outcast. As the net around him tightens, Brockton must use all of his forensic skills to prove his own innocence . . . before he ends up behind bars with some of the very killers he's helped to convict.
Flesh and Bone is another roller-coaster ride into the world of forensic anthropology, its twists and turns marked by drama and pathos, humor and grief, families and friends and enemies. With captivatingly real characters, plus fascinating scientific insights drawn from the case files of a living forensic legend, this astonishing novel confirms Jefferson Bass as one of our most talented authors of suspense.
Customer Reviews:
One very good book........2007-08-09
First Sentence: The chain-link gate yowled like an angry tomcat in the watery light of dawn.
Forensic anthropologist Dr. Bill Brockton is helping state medical examiner, and his burgeoning love, Jess Carter with the case of a man's body found sexually mutilated, tied to a tree, and dressed in drag. He is also dealing with the suspension of this job after a lecture on evolution upsets a student who believes in creationism. When Brockton thinks things can't get worse, he is accused and arrested for murder.
There was a lot happening in this book and Jefferson Bass tied it all together into a gripping, interesting story. There was so much I liked about this book. Brockton isn't the classic macho protagonist; he's a bit unsure of himself, hesitant about a new relationship and able to cry. That he has been given interesting supporting characters adds balance and dimension to the story. Some may not care for the character's lecture on evolution, but I found it interesting and it is relevant to the story. The description of the protagonist's experience as a murder suspect provides a different aspect than one normally gets. Add to all this great dialogue, a strong sense of place and emotional tension, and the result is one very good book.
Wonderful !!!.......2007-08-09
Jefferson Bass has done it again. He's got me hooked and I can't wait for his next book to appear. Keep'em coming Mr. Bass.
Wonderful...Wonderful...Wonderful
Dr. Death.......2007-03-26
In their second effort, Jefferson Bass has put forth a fast paced novel again featuring Dr. Bill Brockton, forensic anthroplogist, college instructor and founder of the Body Farm. When Dr. Brockton begins to investigate the murder of an unknown male, the plot starts rolling. Assisted by Dr. Jess Carter, M.E. From Chattanooga, Brockton uncovers the victim's identity. As they dig deeper into the case, the stakes are raised and it is obvious that someone does not want the truth known. Somewhat predictable plot twist awaits the reader half way through the book, but all-in-all, a fast read.
The Dynamic Duo is delving deeper into the realms of imagination.......2007-03-22
"Flesh and Blood" is the sequel to the writing team Jefferson Bass' first fictional work, "Carved in Bone." 'Jefferson Bass' is a pseudonym from Dr. William Bass, the famed forensic anthropologist and writer of "Death's Acre" (a non-fiction autobiography and excellent treatise on forensic anthropology) and Jon Jefferson, who worked with Dr. Bass producing "Death's Acre" and two National Geographic documentaries on the Body Farm.
"Flesh and Bone" takes up close to where its predecessor, "Carved in Bone" leaves off. Dr. Bill Brockton and his faithful GA assistant, Miranda, are setting up an experiment on the Body Farm. Their goal is to reproduce a gory murder of a young may they believe to be a hate crime against homosexuals. By reproducing the crime using a donated cadaver, they are hoping to clearly establish the time of death of a young man left hanging in a tree dressed in drag paraphenalia and brutally mutilated.
As the story goes on, Dr. Brockton and Dr. Jess Carter, the Chattanooga, TN Medical Examiner, are getting much closer. It looks like Dr. Brockton may stand a chance at love after 2 years missing his deceased wife.
Of course, not all things are going smoothly. A classroom lecture gone somewhat awry, ends up with Dr. Brockton having to defend himself against creationists, mirroring the infamous 'Scopes Monkey Trial' which happened only a few miles from Knoxville in Dayton, TN. Some would call this plotline 'unnecessary' but I think it's very timely and interesting--considering this week an East Coast teacher was fired under accusations of witchcraft--for teaching counter to the views of her principal.
But the situation decomposes much faster than the bodies--when the crime scene mockup is tampered with, Dr. Brockton is the prime suspect for murder. As the stories hurdles on, Brockton's job, family, even his life are all at stake.
"Flesh and Bone" is a fast-paced and very real look at the life of a forensic anthropologist. The only fault I can find with the book is that it's perhaps 'too real.' The commonalities between Dr. Brockton and Dr. William Bass are just too similar to be missed and in this reviewer's opinion, show some lack of imagination. Art Bohannon, the Knoxville Police Department fingerprint expert and childrens' advocate, is really Art Bohannon and names of people credited with helping the team in some way were only changed slightly--if at all.
"Carved in Bone" depicted a situation in an East TN county that was very similar to reality. "Flesh and Bone" did go a step further--taking real situations and bending them to work in the book.
In "Flesh and Bone" we look at the judicial system from the point of view of the Defense, which definitely is a twist from the noted criminalist's usual position. That showed imagination and a whole lot of research. Well done, gentlemen--I hope to see book three very soon.
Flesd and Bone.......2007-03-11
This book was GREAT!!!!!! Jefferson Bass did a wonderful job in developing the story line and characters......I could not put the book down until I finished it.
Book Description
When Zen Flesh, Zen Bones was published in 1957 it became an instant sensation with an entire generation of readers who were just beginning to experiment with Zen. Over the years it has inspired leading American Zen teachers, students, and practitioners. Its popularity is as strong today as ever.
Zen Flesh, Zen Bones is a book that offers a collection of accessible, primary Zen sources so that readers can struggle over the meaning of Zen for themselves. It includes 101 Zen Stories, a collection of tales that recount actual experiences of Chinese and Japanese Zen teachers over a period of more than five centuries; The Gateless Gate, the famous thirteenth century collection of Zen koans; Ten Bulls, a twelfth century commentary on the stages of awareness leading to enlightenment; and Centering, a 4,000 year-old teaching from India that some consider to be the roots of Zen.
Customer Reviews:
Strangely comforting.......2007-01-23
I don't know why I find this book such a comfort. But it is one. I have read and reread it for over thirty years now. Zen is very foreign to American life. And it is hardly the answer to that life. But it is a partial answer -- if its influence on me is any indication.
Expand Your Mind.......2007-01-06
Zen Buddisim doesn't have an official set of scriptures like all the other great religions of the world, but I consider this little dandy my set of Zen scriptures. These wonderful little Koans will considerably expand your mind and give you plenty to ponder upon or not to ponder upon. Each one can be read over and over again with new meaning sprouting forth each time. The book itself is a nice size and feels good to hold. I recommend this to anyone wanting to be at better peace with themselfs and everything around them. Beautiful.
An endless treasure.......2006-10-11
I still own my battered, much-read paperback copy of this sublime little book, which I bought in 1971. To this day it seems to me the single best introduction to Zen available, not as theory or philosophy or even daily practice, but as direct experience. Like most of the previous reviewers, I can return to its pages again & again, finding wisdom & food for thought ... or non-thought, if you will. :)
Here is the paradox of mystery composed of absolute clarity & purity, as expressed through often humorous, even (seemingly) ridiculous stories ... yet they make sense at a very deep level, one that bypasses rational, logical thought or conscious understanding. Behind the sometimes giggling face of the monk is a most rigorous, utterly focused mind, one that cuts preconceptions & ego to ribbons.
For anyone interested in the essence of Zen, for anyone wanting to step outside of the world of ten thousand shallow, mass-produced things, this book is indispensable. Most highly recommended!
Finding A Diamond..........2006-09-20
No doctrine, no methods really: but the literature of Zen, and great world literature - Paul Reps compiles, in ZEN FLESH, ZEN BONES, a great compendium of Zen stories, all very short and drawn from 500 years worth of the varied experiences of Zen practitioners from Japan and China.
Add to this the koans of "Gateless Gate," "10 Bulls" - a translation of a 12th century poetic text, and "Centering," an early Sanskrit guite to study and practice.
ZEN FLESH, ZEN BONES in totality isn't going to blow you away; rather this is something you discover, and the insights within will come alive within you. After the passage of much time, it's ever more valuable to access and get to know.
-David Alston
Excellent!.......2006-09-07
"Zen Flesh, Zen Bones" is probably the best introductory book to Zen Buddhism available in the United States. It is an anthology containing Zen stories and riddles. The prose is light; "Zen Flesh, Zen Bones" is not a weighty read that will discourage readers from delving into the subject matter. Read this book before any other on Zen!
Book Description
One horrible murder. Two people destined for love or tragedy. Emotions explode in the novel Julia Spencer-Fleming's readers have been clamoring for. Police Chief Russ Van Alstyne's first encounter with Clare Fergusson was in the hospital emergency room on a freezing December night. A newborn infant had been abandoned on the town's Episcopal church steps. If Russ had known that the church had a new priest, he certainly would never have guessed that it would be a woman. Not a woman like Clare. That night in the hospital was the beginning of an attraction so fierce, so forbidden, that the only thing that could keep them safe from compromising their every belief was distance---but in a small town like Millers Kill, distance is hard to find.Russ Van Alstyne figures his wife kicking him out of their house is nobody's business but his own. Until a neighbor pays a friendly visit to Linda Van Alstyne -and finds the woman's body, gruesomely butchered, on the kitchen floor. To the state police, it's an open-and-shut case of a disaffected husband, silencing first his wife, then the murder investigation he controls. To the townspeople, it's proof that the whispered gossip about the police chief and the priest was true. To the powers-that-be in the church hierarchy, it's a chance to control their wayward cleric once and for all. Obsession. Lies. Nothing is as it seems in Millers Kill, where betrayal twists old friendships and evil waits inside quaint white clapboard farmhouses.
Customer Reviews:
All moral flesh?? Prudery be damned, please, please........2007-07-31
Perhaps the title of this book should have been: All Moral Flesh. After I typed that in error, I then realized that this exactly exemplifies my problem with this book. I believe this is the 5th book in the Clare Fergusson/Russ van Alstyne series, and I've listened to three of them as audiobooks. I keep waiting for the passionate, pull-out-the-stops, love scene between Clare and Russ, but it never comes. I was willing to wait for awhile, but now I'm truly disappointed.
Ms. Spencer-Fleming. This is not Victorian England of 1840. We're not talking Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester here, or Cathy and Heathcliff. The last time I looked it was 2007 and people can deal with a little explicit sex and nudity in novels and if not that, at least the acknowledgment that such strong characters would act out strong feelings. I think the reader is getting tired of the on-again, off-again, overly melodramatic breast beating (instead of touching) between the protagonists.
This could have been a great book and a wonderful series, but the inexplicable, incomprehensible prudery has gotten in the way. After three novels, I still very much enjoy the dialogue, the scene evocation, the suspense, and the plot twists, but Author, please let the characters act on their feelings like real people.
SPOILER: My husband also listened to the audiobook and noted that teenage psychopaths with delusions of power (like the Columbine killers, Virginia Tech killer, etc.) use guns so they can project power, but still distance themselves from their victims. When a killer is a sadist, he may prefer a knife, because it is intimate and often sexual. The author's prudery shows up again in having the killer so indifferent to the attractive woman he kills. A sadist "is amused by, or takes pleasure in, the psychological or physical suffering of others (including animals)" (American Psychiatric Association). When the ME reassures Russ that the victim didn't suffer, the crime departs from type. If the perpetrator was a real sadist, this death would not have been without suffering. A crime author should be no more squeamish than her killers.
All in all, what I want to convey is that the author is a very good writer, she just frustrates the reader with the irritating lapses that could have been eliminated to make the book almost perfect fiction. I wish I could have been her editor instead of a commenter on the published book.
Five stars for most of the novel, one star for the end.......2007-07-16
I have been a big fan of this series. While the "cozy" mystery often streches credibilty with the ways in which local people become detectives, I always found myself believing that Claire Fergusson, in her capacity as a priest, former military officer still craving adventure, and nosy person who does want to help, would find herself in these situations. More challenging is believing tha she would push the boundaries with her friendship with the Russ, the married Chief of police. However, that has been the most compelling apsect of the series--how two deeply moral people negotiate the fact that they are in love and morally, cannot be together.
The mystery, as usual, was tightly constructed. Fast paced, suspsenseful--my fingers were flying as I turned the pages. The problem with this book (SPOLIER ALERT) is that Spencer-Fleming took the easy way out of the moral conflict. I suspect some would say that the characters are still haunted, but I distinctly remember the author writing in an interview or website that she would not do what she did at the end of this novel. And that ruined the integrity of the series for me.
We are, after all, humans.......2007-07-15
The human foibles that Julia Spencer-Fleming so beautifully portrays are what keep me waiting for her next books. Yes, Clare does some really dumb things - like tearing off into untenable situations without thinking. I have a friend like that. Drives me nuts. I can identify. Yes, Russ does some equally dumb things - like spouting off when he should keep his mouth shut, or keeping his mouth shut when he should be sharing what he's thinking. I've known men like tht. Drives me nuts. I can identify.
That said, ALL MORTAL FLESH is a winner - but only if one reads the first books in the series (in proper order). I doubt anyone could appreciate the tumbled roller-coaster plotting of this book without a firm knowledge of just who we're dealing with here.
Mystery writers (myself included) know that there is value to producing a mystery series in which each book can be read as a "stand-alone." One of the problems with this is the need for presenting background information that to a committed fan seems repetitious at best and boring at worst. Spencer-Fleming has graduated into the realm of a writer who trusts her readers to know these characters. ALL MORTAL FLESH avoids too much backstory and gets us right into the action. And there's even a cat in this one.
It kept me up till the wee hours. It was worth it!
Totally amazed by the ending............2007-05-13
I have just finished reading this book and am still shocked!!! I didn't anticipate a "happily ever after ending" but not the way it ended. I do believe, as others have stated, that you really need to read her previous Clare/Russ books in order to get the full effect and emotion of the main characters. I also think she left too many things "unresolved" to make this the end of the series. I have been enthralled by her books from the beginning. I live in upstate NY and my daughter lives in Saratoga (which she mentions in this book also). The author was born in Plattsburgh where my daughter went to college and I also am an Episcopalian. She depicts the area beautifully and I get excited when she mentions places that I know. When she quotes from the Book of Common Prayer I can say the prayers right along with her!!!!!!! A friend read her first book and was disappoined that Clare didn't have stronger faith that would have prevented her from falling for Russ. But I think the author betrayed Clare very honestly and very real. I wish that we had more background on her to show why she left the Army and joined the priesthood. I know she touched on that in her early books but not enough. I sincerely hope there is at least one more book in this series as this ending made me feel very sad..........
Enjoyable... until it slides off the rails.......2007-05-05
Perhaps I'm not used to the contrivances of the mystery genre -- I read these books more for the characterizations than to find out who committed the murder of the week. And in that department, the book lived up to the promise of its predecessors... at least, for about three-quarters of the way. I thought an event near the ending was a bit of a cop-out, but that was nothing compared to the ridiculously unlikely development in the last chapter. The twist felt wholly artificial and unbelievable, imposed on the story for the sake of being shocking. The aftermath of the first situation proposed in the book was interesting. The revision that happened near the end -- had potential to be interesting in the future. But the third version? Now it's just getting absurd. Will a piano fall out of the sky onto our heroine in the next book?
Amazon.com
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson take on the daunting task of rebuilding Western philosophy in alignment with three fundamental lessons from cognitive science: The mind is inherently embodied, thought is mostly unconscious, and abstract concepts are largely metaphorical. Why so daunting? "Cognitive science--the empirical study of the mind--calls upon us to create a new, empirically responsible philosophy, a philosophy consistent with empirical discoveries about the nature of mind," they write. "A serious appreciation of cognitive science requires us to rethink philosophy from the beginning, in a way that would put it more in touch with the reality of how we think." In other words, no Platonic forms, no Cartesian mind-body duality, no Kantian pure logic. Even Noam Chomsky's generative linguistics is revealed under scrutiny to have substantial problems.
Parts of Philosophy in the Flesh retrace the ground covered in the authors' earlier Metaphors We Live By, which revealed how we deal with abstract concepts through metaphor. (The previous sentence, for example, relies on the metaphors "Knowledge is a place" and "Knowing is seeing" to make its point.) Here they reveal the metaphorical underpinnings of basic philosophical concepts like time, causality--even morality--demonstrating how these metaphors are rooted in our embodied experiences. They repropose philosophy as an attempt to perfect such conceptual metaphors so that we can understand how our thought processes shape our experience; they even make a tentative effort toward rescuing spirituality from the heavy blows dealt by the disproving of the disembodied mind or "soul" by reimagining "transcendence" as "imaginative empathetic projection." Their source list is helpfully arranged by subject matter, making it easier to follow up on their citations. If you enjoyed the mental workout from Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works, Lakoff and Johnson will, to pursue the "Learning is exercise" metaphor, take you to the next level of training. --Ron Hogan
Book Description
Two leading thinkers offer a blueprint for a new philosophy.
"Their ambition is massive, their argument important.â¦The authors engage in a sort of metaphorical genome project, attempting to delineate the genetic code of human thought." -The New York Times Book Review
"This book will be an instant academic best-seller." -Mark Turner, University of Maryland
This is philosophy as it has never been seen before. Lakoff and Johnson show that a philosophy responsible to the science of the mind offers a radically new and detailed understandings of what a person is. After first describing the philosophical stance that must follow from taking cognitive science seriously, they re-examine the basic concepts of the mind, time, causation, morality, and the self; then they rethink a host of philosophical traditions, from the classical Greeks through Kantian morality through modern analytical philosophy.
Customer Reviews:
Omission of Nietzsche.......2007-06-26
It is not possible to deal properly with such a subject by using Kant, leaving out Nietzsche and the selfish gene of Dawkins. The general philosophers they use are in the shadow of a platonist metaphysic (the Socratic Judaeo-Christian metaphysic) which thus forces them to deal with pseudo-problems. Sorry to be so grumpy. It is easy to stand back and take pot-shots at another person's work.
What western philosophy should be........2007-05-11
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have now demonstrated in this book that philosophy is almost exclusively based in human experience and not in abstraction. Unfortunately, they had to bring their own extreme personal political and religious views into what was a good linguistic text. This book is like many others in that you must discern the good (i.e., the epistemology) and disregard the bad (i.e., their personal options of politics, religion, and morality).
Great attempt in trying to tackle a monumental task.......2006-09-24
I read the editors reviews above and the top customer reviews for this text. I don't feel I need to cover the same ground and I'm not going to. However, I have some personal thoughts that may be useful to add.
In my opinion, Philosophy in the Flesh is a monumental undertaking because it is an attempt to topple an existing paradigm marked by many unexamined assumptions about the nature of the mind, consciousness and the mind-body relationship. This is a very tall order and while the book has some shortcomings, it successfully makes a dent in this direction.
I agree with one reviewer's comments about not including and integrating work from researchers on the relationship between consciousness, the body and emotions such as Damasio. To get this background on your own, I would consider reading "The Feeling of What Happens" and other research in the field. I also agree with this same reviewer's comment about neglecting an evolutionary perspective and to get this I would start by reading David Buss. Understanding our cognitive biases is important and many of these do come from evolutionary psychology. For dramatic examples of these, you might try reading THE EVOLUTION OF DESIRE on sexual mating strategies or JEALOUSY by David Buss. There are also other many good books in this general genre and David Buss has written more than a few of them.
With respect to PHILOSOPHY IN THE FLESH itself, I found the first 136 pages most useful. This justifies the cost of the book because it lays out the author's basic theories, the disconnects between what we know about the mind and what is assumed to be true because of an enduring, but outdated concept of the mind-body relationship. In other words, the first 136 pages are like a nitty-gritty short book on the "must know" concepts.
The remainder of the book goes more deeply into specific examples of how the mind is embodied, the role of unconscious condition as the "hidden hand" that influences our actions, etc. It basically amounts to a defense of the first 136 pages, which in itself is convincing and compelling.
This book has implications for anyone who is interested in the mind-body relation and the body's role in cognition. Not everyone will want to read all of it, but I found that picking it up periodically and diving deeper into specific areas useful. It's not a bedtime story, so plowing through all 600 pages over a week or two might be a bit too much for someone who isn't a specialist in this area.
Lakoff has also written some interesting things on metaphor in dreams. If you have an interest in dreams, this book might be thought provoking and if so, you might also be interested in some of Lakoff's articles on interpreting dreams. If you want a nice introduction to dream interpretation that has a good article by Lakoff, consider DREAMS edited by Kelly Bulkeley. (Kelly also has a lot of other excellent books on dreaming and is quite a scholar in that area.)
I liked this book and I think it made a good dent in bringing down an outdated paradigm. I think anyone who is a cognitive therapist should read this and consider the implications. This would also be a good book for people who are more somatically-oriented therapists or who have a strong interest in mind-body medicine. I think Feldenkrais practioners and Rosen Bodyworks people would also benefit greatly from understanding this material.
Lastly, if you like this book, you might also like AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT (Feldenkrais), the EMBODIED MIND (Varela), THE ANATOMY OF CHANGE and The Body (Yuasa Yasuo). Some of these books are less mainstream than others, but they are ALL thought provoking in different ways.
A thick book, but thin on good ideas.......2006-07-16
This is a big, thick, and dull book. Much of what is in it seems trivial. And I feel that were the material in this book to be lost somehow, it could be re-invented so easily that one has to doubt its overall value.
The authors start by saying that abstract concepts are largely metaphorical. And that may well be true, but I feel the authors do not make much of a case for all this having much significance. There is also a discussion of how people categorize concepts; it's not particularly profound.
We see Lakoff and Johnson talk about scientific truth. But I'm not impressed. In fact, there are some mathematical "truths" whether we are aware of them or not. And there are some aspects of reality that we may or may not recognize. And that is about it. My guess is that most folks could, if they applied themselves, write a better essay on truth than the authors did.
There's a section on time. Saint Augustine and Zeno get mentioned here, even though I feel that they were hardly great thinkers. We do not even see Augustine's question about whether time is discrete or continuous (actually a very good question) let alone his idiotic answer to it. And the authors have plenty to say about events and causes, once again offering little of value.
Next we see a discussion of the mind. It is explained that we make analogies between unappetizing food and distasteful ideas, but even this is in fact garbled. In fact, we have a greater tendency to make analogies between unappetizing items and lies.
The authors talk about artificial intelligence and the Turing test. This section is not all that special, but I actually liked it, and I feel that it is worth reading.
There is plenty about the use of language. But most of it is not very illuminating. I could talk about language as well and, say, examine the difference between "getting ahead of oneself" and "being beside oneself." But I doubt there would be much value in that!
The authors talk about some famous philosophers of the past. In doing so they mention that it makes no sense to speak of a time before the Big Bang, since time did not exist then. But that's merely semantic, and it is (in my opinion) a particularly silly thing to say in a book on philosophy! By simply asking if it's a little provincial to say that Reality extends in time to only a few times the age of our planet, I've already said something sensible (and maybe even profound!) about Reality outside of the Big Bang.
Lakoff and Johnson include a weak chapter on morality. But to their credit, they do at least show some of the problems with various types of moral systems. Of course, we do not need the authors to tell us that. For example, we can all see that during World War Two, many Jewish officials (highly educated to be moral leaders) in communities that were being annihilated wound up with (quite deservedly) no moral authority whatsoever with those who remained in these communities.
We read about theories of "rational action." Once again, I found little of value here. I do think it makes sense for people to be responsible for their actions and to benefit from their accomplishments, but I can't see why it would be profound to say so.
At the end of the book, there is a mention of evolutionary theories. That could have led to an interesting discussion of what direction we're all headed in, what we ought to do to get there, how to avoid upcoming problems, and how to adapt to what could be Reality in the future. All this could have been discussed in more detail, but the authors did not do that.
There's some good material in the book, so I am awarding it three stars, but I feel it is barely worth reading.
Interesting, but has problems.......2006-05-22
I think that a serious reader will find a great deal in this book because it contains useful information about how people think and learn. The caulual reader will get nothing from it, but that is what is to be expected from philosophy. On the other hand, the history of philosphy is strange, Chomsky's views on many subjects are mistated, and strangest of all the discussion of the law of non-contradiction is disguised as a discussion of semantics and grammar.
Actually, it is fairly interesting that they found evidence that concepts of sets and logic are inherent within the brain (they are not in the Platonic plane), but it is strange that this is not stated. It is deeply related to the discussion of the brains tendency to catagorize, which is dicussed elsewhere in the book.
The discussion of ideas billed as philosophy by western culture is also interesting, and I do not know of better book on the subject. The central concern of book is how our thought process is filled with multiple associations (ideas are deeply entangled in metaphors for something else). They produce a great deal of data to back up their central thesis, and the data alone is interesting.
The so called history of philosophy deals manly with four people, Aristotle, Kant, Plato, Descartes and Chomsky. There is no reason given that they did not discuss eastern philosophy and no obvious reason for the choices of western philosophers. The reason is not that they chose people who they agree with, they chose philosphers to disagree with.
You do not need to be linguist to realize that the authors mistate Chomsky's opinions on several points. All you need do is read a sample of his books and books about Chomsky. For example in "Introducing Chomsky", it is said that Chomsky believes that productivity would increase if people owned the means of their productive output. This is a concern for material well being, and it makes no sense to claim that Chomsky's economic opinions are entirely concerned with material well being. The reader will find many such mistakes about Chomsky's real opinion.
The idea that semantics affect inherent language is advanced by faily interesting examples. One example is a sentence where the words "colorless green" appear. The brain does consider green things a subset of things with color. Therefore green things are not "colorless". Either an object is in the set of things with color or outside of it so the sentence is impossible regaurdless of what language it is in. Every math teacher knows that this is the law of non-contradiction (an object is member of set or not a member of set).
Book Description
The 1990s witnessed the emergence of a spectacular and widespread body modification culture that celebrates such practices as pierc-ing, tattooing, scarification, subdermal implants, and flesh hanging per--form-ances. Based on years of interviews with body modifiers through-out the U.S., In the Flesh provides the most comprehensive and objective look at this widespread phenomenon. From punk rock to 'modern primitives,' from queer SM to cyberpunks, sociologist Victoria Pitts provides insight into the vast diversity of body modifi-ca-tion subcultures and explores the way these groups alter their bodies in response to the social and psychological restrictions of the modern world.
Customer Reviews:
save your money.......2007-06-28
poor quality printing with very few photo's and what they were was not up to today's standards
Body modification-let the truth be told!.......2004-06-11
The book deals with a myriad of social issues pertaning to the body and its modification to show both resistance and conformaty to mainstreem and subculture respectively. And indeed the book was interesting to read once and maybe twice if one is writing their masters thesis or doctoral dissertaion. However, I felt that the book would someteimes just drag on and on. What was however interesting was the course that included the book in its uses. The work is very academic, professional and worth the time to read.
Superbly intelligent rendering of postmodern culture.......2004-05-11
Victoria Pitts's book "In the Flesh" is the most brilliant analysis of postmodern culture I have ever read. Through the lens of recent phenomena in body modification--from the beautifying to the erotic and grotesque--she shows how issues of subjectivity are complexly intertwined with body strategies--performances in which the actors at once gain and lose themselves. With exquisite analysis of fascinating subjects and clear-minded use of postmodern theory, her book is the epitome of rigorous scholarship, both theoretical and empirical. It is, in a word, a theory of flesh and its agencies; but beyond the body, it offers us a scaffolding from which to view the painfully complex issues of contemporary culture at large.
bodies and culture.......2004-04-07
This is a fascinating book that is theoretically sophisticated and guides us through the body in modern and postmodern theory. Her insight into the range of body modification practices and how they are linked to broader cultural shifts in late modernity is sharp and convincing.
Modifying the Medical Line.......2004-01-10
In the Flesh is an insightful examination of the more extreme body modification subculture, one that invites the reader to re-examine his or her expectations about bodies, body politics, and medical technologies. A generous writer, Pitts presents her research to the reader and offers a framework for investigating how some bodily alterations are medicalized or accepted because they enforce normative expectations about health and beauty, and how others are pathologized. In lively and lucid prose, the author provides us with a useful look at an important issue, and does so (much to her credit) without confining her research participants or her readers to a specific political camp. There may be bright political lines between circumcision, botox injections, Michael Jackson, and flesh hangings -- or then again, maybe there are not. In the Flesh gives us new tools with which to draw those lines for ourselves.
Average customer rating:
- Kellerman Doesn't Impress
- Delaware Delivers
- Alex is digging himself a deep hole.
- Enjoyable Read
- Pretty good
|
Flesh and Blood
Jonathan Kellerman
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 United States | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books | 18th Century | 19th Century | 20th Century | African American | Asian American | Classics | Collections & Readers | Drama | General | Hispanic | History & Criticism | Humor | Jewish American | Letters & Correspondence | Native American | Poetry | Short Stories | Women Writers
Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
General | Mystery | Mystery & Thrillers | Subjects | Books
General | Thrillers | Mystery & Thrillers | Subjects | Books
Psychological & Suspense | Thrillers | Mystery & Thrillers | Subjects | Books
Kellerman, Jonathan | ( K ) | Authors, A-Z | Mystery & Thrillers | Subjects | Books
General | Mystery & Thrillers | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:
-
Dr. Death (Alex Delaware)
-
A Cold Heart (Alex Delaware)
-
The Murder Book (Alex Delaware)
-
Monster (Random House Large Print)
-
Survival of the Fittest (Alex Delaware)
ASIN: 0679459626
Release Date: 2001-11-20 |
Amazon.com
Psychologist Alex Delaware hasn't been in private practice for a long time, but when the mother of a former patient calls and asks for his help, he can't turn her down. He couldn't help Lauren Teague when she was alive, but something about his failure with the beautiful, sullen teenager who grew up to be a high-priced call girl won't let him walk away after her bullet-ridden body turns up in an L.A. dumpster. When she wasn't turning tricks, she was a straight-A student; despite his detective pal Milo's demurral, Alex is convinced there's a connection between Lauren's death and another beautiful UCLA psych major who disappeared a year earlier. With his customary skill and compassion, Jonathan Kellerman draws us deep into Lauren's complicated life, from a university campus to a Malibu estate owned by a wealthy publisher of soft-core porn (who bears a distinct resemblance to the pajama-clad mogul who made a small white bunny famous).
Kellerman's last couple of books have been a bit disappointing, but here the bestselling author is writing up to the high standard he set in his earlier ones. With solid plotting, well-realized characterizations, and a strong narrative drive, Flesh and Blood delivers the real goods on every page. --Jane Adams
Book Description
Lauren Teague is a beautiful, defiant, borderline-delinquent teenager when her parents bring her to Alex Delaware's office. But for all Alex's skill and effort, Lauren resists--angrily, provocatively. Reluctantly, the psychologist chalks Lauren up as one of the inevitable failures of a challenging profession. But years later, when Alex encounters Lauren as a stag party's featured entertainment, both doctor and patient are stricken with shame. And the ultimate horror takes place when, soon after, Lauren's brutalized corpse is found dumped in an alley. Alex disregards the advice of his trusted friend, LAPD detective Milo Sturgis, and jeopardizes his relationship with longtime lover Robin Castagna in order to pursue Lauren's murderer. As he investigates his young patient's troubled past, Alex enters the shadowy worlds of fringe psychological experimentation and the sex industry, and then into mortal danger when lust and big money collide in Southern California.
Jonathan Kellerman's L.A. is evil, seductive, erotic, and unforgiving, and
Flesh and Blood is mind-opening in its drama of a driven man's personal quest, breathtaking in its ingenious plot, filled with unforgettable characters, and topped off by a terrifying climax. This is suspense fiction as its best.
Download Description
Lauren Teague is a beautiful, defiant, borderline delinquent teenager when her parents bring her to Dr. Alex Delaware¿s office. Lauren angrily resists Alex¿s help - and the psychologist is forced to chalk Lauren up as one of the inevitable failures of his profession. Years later, when Alex and Lauren come face-to-face in a shocking encounter, both doctor and patient are stricken with shame. But the ultimate horror takes place when, soon after, Lauren¿s brutalized corpse is found dumped in an alley. Alex disregards the advice of his trusted friend, LAPD detective Milo Sturgis, and jeopardizes his relationship with longtime lover, Robin Castagna, in order to pursue Lauren¿s killer. As he investigates his young patient¿s troubled past, Alex enters the shadowy worlds of fringe psychological experimentation and the sex industry - and then into mortal danger, when lust and big money collide in an unforgiving Los Angeles.
Customer Reviews:
Kellerman Doesn't Impress.......2007-04-16
The first Kellerman book I have read, and possibly the last I think.
It was Ok, a murder mystery that delves into the world of prostitution and porn. It didn't leave me wanting to read more from this author, but judging from other reviews on this page, it is possible I started with the wrong book.
Delaware Delivers.......2007-01-21
When Alex Delaware, former counseling psychologist turned consultant to LAPD, has a former patient murdered, he seems compelled to try to find the murderer. He contacts his friend, Milo, police detective, and they work on the case together. Kellerman's style of writing is very descriptive and enjoyable. Also, the book is fairly suspensful (and a little far fetched at times). Despite a few flaws, it is an enjoyable read. I actually listened to this book on tape and it was easy to get into. This is the third book I have read by Kellerman, and so far it's my favorite. I like the way the author chooses to have the main character, Alex, reveal his thoughts about various people as suspects. He often sifts through his thoughts, and it keeps the reader in tune with who the character sees as the most likely suspects. I would recommend this book as a great starting point, if you were interested in trying out Kellerman.
Alex is digging himself a deep hole........2006-07-09
Seems to me Alex has been getting increasingly obsessive over the years and in this one, he is going over the deep end.
Out of nowhere, Psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware gets a frantic phone call from the mother of a former patient. Lauren Teague was a troubled teen when Alex tried to treat her years ago - one of his failures. After years on the street, though, the 25 year old woman seems to have turned her life around and is currently a psych major at the U - influenced by her brief visits to Dr. Delaware as a teen. But now, she is missing and her mother fears the worse. Alex does what little he can to try to find her, but when his pal Milo Sturgis, the homicide detective, finds her murdered, Alex becomes absolutely obsessed.
He starts neglecting his girlfriend Robin, he disregards Milo's warnings and goes snooping on his own. Is it because he feels he failed Lauren all those years ago? Or is the case merely a welcomed distraction from his own disquietude? And he's not his usual erudite self in this one either - he gets a lot of things wrong - almost gets himself killed. He gets enough right, though, to lead Milo in the right direction and eventually the tangled conspiracy is unearthed and the true tragedy is revealed. But at what expense? Will his relationship with Robin survive?
Enjoyable Read.......2006-06-12
I always enjoy the friendship between Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis. There were so many twists and turns but the story kept my interest. Alex became so involved in the murder of a former patient that he seemed to loose track of his relationship with his beloved Robin.
Pretty good.......2006-02-08
This is the first Jonathan Kellerman novel I've ever read, and only because it was a loaner. But, I ended up enjoying it.
The story is about Alex Delaware's quest to find out who murdered a former patient of his, and why. The patient was Lauren Teague, whom Alex had only seen for 2 sessions when Lauren was 15. Then after those sessions, she never returned, and Alex didn't give much thought about her until he encountered her 6 years later. After another brief session with Lauren, she disappeared again, and 4 years later her mother, Jane, contacted Alex, frantic that Lauren was missing. Therefore, Alex becomes enmeshed in the hunt for her killer or killers, placing his own life at risk.
I thought the basic plot itself was good. However, the story got a little bit convoluted at times, what with Alex's list of possible suspects changing on a constant basis. Plus, each suspects connection to other people in the story tended to get a little confusing as well. Nevertheless, you're still kept guessing as to who really perpetrated the crime.
As for Alex's personal life and his relationship with Robin, I didn't really find that very believable. I am sure their relationship has obviously been built up in prior novels, but since this is the only one I've read, that's what I'm basing this on. And the book's description said their relationship was being strained due to Alex's involvement in the case. Yet, from my perspective, it didn't seem like much of a relationship to begin with.
At any rate, it was a good story, and I would probably read another book by this author.
Amazon.com
In Soul Made Flesh, Carl Zimmer reveals the strange and complicated history of the discovery of the human brain. Amid the turmoil of 17th century England, with religious leaders and monarchs battling for control of the country, an elite group of thinkers used every scientific means at their disposal to figure out that the unassuming putty in our heads was crucial to human health and wisdom. Primary among these Oxford scholars was Thomas Willis, whom the Royal Society affectionately called "our chymist." Soul Made Flesh is as much a biography of Willis and the men who shaped him as it is a medical history. Zimmer admirably sets the stage for what would become a metaphysical revolution and spark arguments that continue to this day about what the mind is and where, if anywhere, the human soul resides:
Thomas Willis... isolated the soul from stars and demons and made the chemical workings of the brain the key to sanity and happiness. Just as important, he helped make the brain a familiar thing.
Zimmer applies the same dedicated research and quietly sparkling style to this book as he did to Parasite Rex and At the Water's Edge, distilling reams of historical and scientific information into a concise yet comprehensive narrative. The book's chapters are accompanied by drawings by Willis' contemporary Christopher Wren, whose architectural sensibilities made the brain's structure beautiful to behold. --Therese Littleton
Book Description
In this unprecedented history of a scientific revolution, award-winning author and journalist Carl Zimmer tells the definitive story of the dawn of the age of the brain and modern consciousness. Told here for the first time, the dramatic tale of how the secrets of the brain were discovered in seventeenth-century England unfolds against a turbulent backdrop of civil war, the Great Fire of London, and plague. At the beginning of that chaotic century, no one knew how the brain worked or even what it looked like intact. But by the century's close, even the most common conceptions and dominant philosophies had been completely overturned, supplanted by a radical new vision of man, God, and the universe.
Presiding over the rise of this new scientific paradigm was the founder of modern neurology, Thomas Willis, a fascinating, sympathetic, even heroic figure at the center of an extraordinary group of scientists and philosophers known as the Oxford circle. Chronicled here in vivid detail are their groundbreaking revelations and the often gory experiments that first enshrined the brain as the physical seat of intelligence -- and the seat of the human soul. Soul Made Flesh conveys a contagious appreciation for the brain, its structure, and its many marvelous functions, and the implications for human identity, mind, and morality.
Customer Reviews:
How we came to know the brain as the seat of thought.......2006-11-07
This is the story of how we came to understand that life and thought are not beyond a naturalistic, material explanation. It centers on one seventeenth Englishman, Thomas Willis, around whom Zimmer assembles in Oxford a cast of early natural philosophers.
Zimmer begins in Greece with Aristotle and continues in Rome with Galen who while they did look at the human body, were too quick to come up with pet theories about biles and humors and present them as facts. For centuries their words ruled science.
Then comes Descartes with his mechanical view of the world, presenting a soul that ruled over the body. Descartes questioned the ancients and corrected some of their grosser factual mistakes but he made a few of his own and repeated their methodological error: he did not question his own pet theories enough.
The heroes of Zimmer's book are surgeons. Then, surgeons were simple menial workers with a gift for butchery and enough skill to allow their patients to survive their operations. The surgeons eventually gathered the courage to stand up to scholarly doctors and point out that Galen's descriptions were wrong. When challenged, they opened up cadavers and counterchallenged the doctors to show them Galen's fictional body systems.
The central hero is Thomas Willis, a country squire turned renowned doctor during the turbulent times of Charles I, Oliver Cromwell, and Charles II. He had the luck to live near Oxford and displayed a keen interest in anatomy. Willis studied the brain and the nervous system with unprecedented precision. He was one of the founders of the Royal Society, meeting with the likes of Robert Hooke and Christopher Wren. Together, these men studied anatomy so that observations overruled theory whenever one did not agree with the other.
Willis's observations, descriptions, and case studies make him the first neurologist. Living in times of religious extremes, this devout man never swore off the primacy of a supernatural soul, but he saw the brain as a tool of the soul and his studies of this organ mechanized our model and led to today's materialistic explanations of consciousness.
Vincent Poirier, Tokyo
Reasonably Good; 3.5.......2006-04-30
This is a fairly good popular account of the scientific revolution in 17th century England with an emphasis on the pioneering neuroanatomical research and speculation of the physician Thomas Willis. Written clearly by an experienced science journalist, this book is largely a popularization of the fairly extensive secondary literature on 17th century science and medicine. This is a very interesting period in European history and the narrative features an impressive list of contributors, including not only Willis but Boyle, Locke, Hooke, and several other important figures. Zimmer does a good job of showing the evolution of thinking about the mind from exclusively metaphysical concepts to thinking about brain and mind functions in a more materialistic manner. The concentration on the very interesting and impressive Willis is the best feature on the book. Zimmer does less well on some other aspects. His account of the development of mechanistic thought is relatively superficial, as is his treatment of theological issues. The subtitle of the book "-and How it Changed the World" is somewhat inappropriate. As Zimmer himself explains, Willis' work was relatively neglected after his death. A final and striking omission is the lack of discussion of Newton. In one sense, this is understandable as Newton tends to eclipse his contemporaries but Newton's achievements became the primary vehicle for convincing the world of the power and utility of science and the mechanistic approach.
What Willis was talking about.......2005-10-22
For about a thousand years, the smartest people of every European generation tried to understand the world around them by reading texts based on scriptures and the works of ancient philosophers. At the end of the thousand years, the living conditions of the average person were the same as they were at the beginning of the thousand years. Life expectancy was around 40, and most people lived in fear of disease and starvation.
It's fascinating to read in "Soul Made Flesh" how completely the mind of the Middle Ages was infused with mysticism. People who were otherwise brilliant found it impossible to believe that any aspect of nature could operate in a purely mechanistic fashion, without spirit or purpose. In fact it was considered blasphemous to think otherwise. Human progress since the beginning of the Enlightenment is simply the adoption and development of a mechanistic understanding of the world, sometimes called "materialist" philosophy.
Zimmer's book provides a thoroughly enjoyable look at the transition between the mystical and mechanistic worldviews. Starting in the early 17th century, the coherent (and incorrect) set of doctrines sanctioned by church and state began to crumble: The Earth was found not to be the center of the universe, but one of several planets orbiting the sun. Matter was made not of Aristotle's four elements, but of atoms. Blood circulated through the body, rather than being absorbed by it. And crucially, the source of reason and consciousness was not a substanceless soul, but a gelatinous lump of biological tissue.
Interestingly, most of the men involved in these discoveries remained deeply religious, even though their findings contradicted what the church had been telling people for the previous 50 generations. And the ones that were physicans continued to rely on mysticism and alchemy to treat their patients. It would be centuries before people were able to talk candidly about a purely mechanistic account of the universe and its inhabitants. And we are only now beginning to enjoy the benefits -- life expectancy has doubled and formerly deadly diseases have been eradicated.
Remarkably, many people in the US have recently been calling for a return to the 17th century way of thinking. The problem is that mysticism didn't work out so well the first time, and now the stakes are much higher.
Did the firing of my neurons make me do it?.......2005-03-02
As a Christian who upholds the truth of Scripture and Science, I find that Carl Zimmer has written a wonderfully engaging, yet disturbing, introduction to the 17th century beginnings of neuroscience. Zimmer is wonderfully engaging in that he is a gifted story teller. He makes the world of Thomas Willis' 17th century Europe come alive. Tying in the ancient views of Aristotle and Galen, Zimmer leads us quickly into the advent of modern anatomical observation as the basis for Rene Descartes' and William Harvey's approach to natural philosophy and medicine. The stage is set for Thomas Willis and his colleagues, such as Christopher Wren and Robert Boyle, to revolutionize Western thought about the soul.
However, this surely isn't dry medical history. The story is filled with fascinating descriptions of other leading natural philosophers of the early Enlightenment, interwoven with social and political tales of the English Civil War and Restoration, and spiced with colorful details about the Christian devotion and theology of the time.
Aside from Willis, my other favorite in the story is Robert Boyle. Like Willis, Boyle was a devout Christian who combined his love for God's Word in the Bible with his love for God's Word as revealed in Creation. For Boyle, he was able to see God's truth and glory in both Holy Scripture and Nature. This is right in line with Francis Bacon's principle of the "Two Books," Scripture and Nature, that God has used to reveal his glory to humankind. In our time where many people see only warfare between science and religion, it is a relief that Zimmer shows us several portraits of great people who sought to find harmony between faith and scientific reason. Right from the start of the Scientific Revolution, Evangelical believers were advocates of the new scientific methods.
Nevertheless, Zimmer's book is disturbing. Concerns of atheism loomed on the horizon of the Anglican natural philosophy of Willis and Boyle. Willis and other Royal Society members struck a moderate position between extreme Puritan biblicists, Quaker spiritualists, and materialists like Thomas Hobbes. However, it was the challenge of the materialists that has proved to be the greatest threat. Willis, in many ways, was a victim of his own success. By granting that some of the soul's traditional characteristics can be explained in purely physical terms, this opened the door to modern skepticism.
Historically, Christians have championed either a trichotomist (spirit-soul-body) or dichotomist (spirit/soul -- body) view of the human person. Thomas Willis' anatomical research has led us to the 21st century tendency to eliminate the spirit or soul from the human person. This physicalist account of human reason, emotions and will challenges a literalist reading of the Scriptural soul and/or spirit of the human person. For example, in Matthew 12:34, Jesus says that it is "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." If the heart is no longer the seat of the soul, then would it be right for us to retranslate this as "out of the abundance of neurons in certain parts of the brain that the mouth speaks?"
Nevertheless, the data is not completely in yet. Granted, harmonizing the insights of neuroscience with the revelation in Holy Scripture is not easy. Yet despite the tension, we can still speak of our ourselves as "souled" beings. The function of the soul needs review but it has not been eliminated totally. The full replacement of the immaterial soul with nothing but a material soul would undoubtedly scandalize Thomas Willis as well. Oddly enough, even though Zimmer celebrates this scientific movement towards physicalism, in the final analysis Zimmer yearns for some type of return to an immaterial soul, along the lines of the Quaker, Anne Conway, or the Romanticism of William Blake. Yet the trend is still there and Christian apologists are faced with the exciting challenge of speaking of the soul in meaningful, biblical terms while being consistent with the findings of today's neuroscience. Those who do not share a Christian faith are faced with somehow finding a way to think about "soul" without falling into meaninglessness talk or else making up something as they go along.
There are a few problems to point out in the book:
(1) Zimmer suggests that "many Puritan sects" rejected the discovery of truth through human reason (p. 114-115). This is a broad overstatement. John Calvin, the primary architect of what would become Puritan theology argued that while reason does not save a person, truth can still be found to some degree through reason. Reformed theologians call this "common grace" which is extended to elect and non-elect alike. In other words, reason does not save but it is not opposed to revelation. Reason compliments revelation. The difference with the Anglicanism of Thomas Willis is that he saw a more significant role for reason as a prerequisite to salvation.
(2) Zimmer finds Darwin's evolutionary theory as being in conflict with the theory of divine purpose and design of Thomas WIllis. Sure, Darwinianism has been used that way to justify a pure naturalistic materialism. But the basics of evolutionary thought hardly rule out design and purpose altogether. Maybe this is why Zimmer is continually speaking out against "Intelligent Design" in his other writings. This is terribly unfortunate. Just because contemporary neuroscience has mapped out the brain does not mean that the soul is simply eliminated. The immaterial soul can and should be thought of in a new way, but to this Christian the God-designed and God-purposed place for the soul is far from gone.
The search for consciousness.......2004-12-13
Ths book is an excellent historical background to man's attempts to understand his own mind. It's also a great primer for some of the theories man has held about his own anatomy and
consciousness.
The author keeps it interesting by tracking the story to the lives Thomas Willis and his buddies at Oxford who must skillfully skate through a minefield of intellectual dogma and even civil war to lay the foundations for scientific mehtod.
The author does a fine job of turning history into a story and ends up teaching the reader quite a bit.
As a bonus the author gives us a short but thoughtful conclusion. Showing how modern researchers continue the quest for the answer to the question what is "man".
Book Description
The road of body modification, piercing, and mutilation is untraveled by most people, yet it holds an undeniable fascination for many. This book, the first monograph devoted to Musafar's photography, chronicles this compelling topic in an amazing collection of 140 photographs taken by Fakir Musafar, the "father of the modern primitive movement." A world-renowned shaman, artist, master piercer, and body modifier, Musafar has devoted most of his life to the personal exploration of body decoration, photographing himself and others since the 1940s. Revealing a modernist edge, these photographs are beautifully composed and printed. Their power as images, however, resides in the intense, unexpected beauty of Musafar's exploration of the spirit/flesh connection.
Customer Reviews:
Buy This Now.......2005-06-26
Fakir Musafar's "Spirit + Flesh" is a must for any fan of contemporary body art. In a time of crass uniformity and conservative, right-wing ideologies running rampant over the global consciousness, this book shines like a beacon in the darkness. This is what the world needs now. Fakir is a master photographer who is not afraid of putting forth images of his deepest self. Not all of the photos are of Mr. Musafar; there are lovely photos of other individuals, some of whom will be familiar to people who study alt-culture. As stated by others, the forward by Mr. Thompson maps the context of the spiritual place from which Mr. Musafar's art emanates. I cannot recommend the book highly enough.
This book is becoming hard to find, so get it while you can. Buy it before our president bans it. This is an important book because it documents spiritual liberation in its purest form. As such, it is required material for anyone who is interested freedom and free thinking.
Great Book.......2003-04-12
This book is very well made. It was not exactly what I expected but I was not disapointed. I was hoping for more piercing pictures or scarification or suspension but all in all it is still fun to look at. I think if you are into bondage it is a good book for you. I myself am not but I still found the pictures inspiring.
Awesome in the true meaning of the word.......2002-10-22
Spirit + Flesh - Anyone who picks up a copy of this remarkable book to admire the photographs should first read the tender forward written by Mark Thompson. The forward is a guide to understanding the story behind the beautiful, artistic photographs taken by Fakir over many years. Some people may find them disturbing or shocking, but there is more to the photographs than images of body modification, visual beauty, and our own perceptions of pain that might have been endured to reach the altered states represented in some of the photos. Leafing through the book and studying the stunning photographs, a story of a remarkable and unique man emerges. This is a book to linger over and share with friends whom understand what it is like to be "different". I am very pleased I added this book to my library.
Libidomag.com review by Jack Hafferkamp.......2002-05-19
...Fakir Musafar's personal transformation from nerdy teenager to seeker of transcendental sublimity is measurable in this collection from brave little Arena Editions. With knots, corsets, tattoos, piercings, suspensions and body modification tools not easily describable, Farkir goes where few dare.
Be forewarned, this book, beautifully designed and realized as it is, is disturbing. If you think Robert Mapplethorpe went too far, this is probably not for you. The images we run here in the Libido Review Gallery are on the cuddly end. Others in the book make me wince no matter how often I see them.
Not all of the images in this book are of Fakir, but most are. And this is as it should be, because it is clear that Fakir is the centerpiece of his own universe, in which the TV idea of the makeover is taken to an extreme hard to imagine without seeing it.
After the initial shock wears off, one can't help but wonder why, one would want to poke very large nails into one's self or hang one's body from giant hooks like so much cattle carcass. Why would one do this to one's self.
The answer is found both in the photos and Mark Thompson's excellent introduction. For me the question turn on the point at which performance art becomes a public spiritural quest. For Fakir, pain is a portal to the divine; he has turned himself into a "technician of the sacred," using his own body much the same way flagellants from a variety of religions use pain to seek the divine.
The only difference is that Farkir has documented his experiments with a photographic artists's eye.
Spirit + Flesh showcases the photography of Fakir Musafar.......2002-05-16
When a young 13-year-old named Roland first began experimenting with body play in South Dakota, he carefully took and developed pictures of the rituals he was imitating from books and National Geographic magazines. Nearly 60 years later, this boy is now a man named Fakir Musafar, who coined the term "modern primitive" and who teaches piercing and leads shamanic rituals in northern California and around the world.
Collected here are images Musafar has taken of himself and friends as they have experimented personally, using body modification methods as a way of exploring themselves and as an alternative to other methods of achieving altered states of consciousness for spiritual growth. This is a high quality publication, the first monograph focusing on Musafar's photography of these journeys. Many of the images are intense, closeup and highly personal. For those unfamiliar with modern-day body modification, some of the images (body piercing, kavandi bearing, ball dancing) may be shocking or uncomfortable.
In the past, Fakir contributed to underground publications, or produced his own small books, or his more recent magazine "body play" as a way of showing his art and photography. Even if you have been seeking out and collecting these random small publication, this is the definitive collection of this artist's work. These images are powerful, intense and unexpectedly beautiful.
Book Description
They won't stay dead! The zombies can't be stopped. From the pitch-black holds of pirate ships and the tunnels beneath the steaming, war-torn jungles of Veitnam, they rise up. And there's no way to slow their shambling march of conquest, no corner of the world or period in history that's safe from the invasion. Secret government labs, the trendy galleries of New York's art scene, and the drawing rooms of nineteenth century England all become the lair of the living dead in this inventive and chilling collection of horror and dark fantasy fiction.
Customer Reviews:
interesting!.......2006-03-09
I loved the idea of many zombie stories under one cover but was disappointed with the comedy in some. I did find the book entertainning but it was really not what I had expected. Would I order and read it again? yes, I would!
Tasty brain dip gives fresh flavor to tired subject.......2004-12-22
Just when you thought that the subject of Zombies has been worn thin enough to see through, along comes Lowder's Book Of More Flesh. Twenty-three unique and thrilling tales of rejuvenated flesh, clammy skin, and honest-to-goodness Zombies.
Highlights of the book are Scott Nicholson's `The Hounds Of Love', a tale of a bad boy and his oozing pet.
Mark McLaughlin's `Trouble', modern day Andy Warhol tale told through the eyes of his cult, The Deathquaker's.
Tom Piccirilli's `Naked Shall I Return', a lesson on sniffing too closely at your Family Tree.
Don D'Ammassa's "The Black Rose", cautions you to make those wishes carefully.
Steve Eller's `Memory Remains', a haunting tale of undying love.
J. Robert King's `The Little Death Of Mr. Phillips', gives us a humorous look at those who just won't give up.
Scot Noel's `The Hyphenated Spirit', a delicious tale of co-joined twins.
And Claude Lalumiere's satirical `The Ethical Treatment Of Meat' will make you giggle in irony.
In addition to these treasures are tales of haunted ship's holds, a zombie camp on the moon, an evil temp-employment agency, a terrifying excursion into the tunnels of Vietnam, bully versus zombie, and a Zombie theme-park. Topping the cake is the lovely cover art by Christopher Shy, always a nice addition to a well turned out anthology.
Through the contributions of some terrifically creative writers, The Book Of More Flesh has breathed life back into an almost dead subject, pun intended. Any fan of the Zombie culture absolutely must pick up this gem of a book. Enjoy! I certainly did!
Fabulous!.......2004-04-23
A fantastic anthology of sci-fi/horror/fantasy fiction! The contributing authors are mostly well-known - or should be. Alexander Marsh Freed's story was one of my favorites, as was Scott Edelman's. Good plots, good characters, good everything!
Totally enjoyable!
Average customer rating:
- Killer Manga!
- Classic Ito
- Man, I would KILL to be that beautiful......
- A must for a horror fan....
- Gah!
|
Flesh Colored Horror
Junji Ito
Manufacturer: ComicsOne
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General | Comics & Graphic Novels | Subjects | Books
General | Graphic Novels | Comics & Graphic Novels | Subjects | Books
Horror | Graphic Novels | Comics & Graphic Novels | Subjects | Books
General | Horror | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:
-
Tomie, Volume 1
-
Uzumaki, Volume 3
-
Tomie, Volume 2
-
Museum of Terror, Volume 3
-
Gyo, Volume 1
ASIN: 1588990869 |
Book Description
Flesh-Colored Horror is a collection of bone-chilling vignettes, centered on what at first seems like ordinary people Tales of obsession, love, loss, beauty, and the perversities of nature will leave you afraid to turn off your lights before you go to bed!
Customer Reviews:
Killer Manga!.......2005-04-12
Junji Ito's Flesh-Colored Horror is a collection of creepy tales based on people who, at first blush, seem utterly ordinary. These are stories of love, longing, beauty, and the perversities of nature. Not recommended for late-night reading (or, perhaps, that is exactly when Flesh Colored Horror should be read). Set in modern bourgeois Japan, the impact of the horror is all the more compelling couched as it is in normality. Absolute terror awaits. Nightmares in print.
Classic Ito.......2004-12-22
"Long Hair In The Attic" is fairly chilling, with a classic open end ending. "Permission" I thought was a little slow and went on longer than it should've, but overall satisfactory. "Bee Hive" had a nice, gross shock near the end, but I would've liked to know a bit more about the Bee Kid. "Dying Young" is disturbing and a good comment from Junji about the state of girls' images in our soceity nowadays. "Headless Statues" didn't work for me, but I can definitely see why some folks liked it. Finally, "Flesh Colored Horror" is most certainly that . The story felt like one of those B horror movies and it works.
Man, I would KILL to be that beautiful.............2004-03-29
Actually, this is only a 3 ½ star book, but Ito gets the benefit of the doubt. The stories themselves are wonderfully gruesome and creepy, but its painfully obvious that this is an earlier effort of Ito's, lacking the polish that the Uzumaki series had.
The drawings are plainer, and the dialogue is pretty stilted with occasional yawning gaps in it, but the stories are well worth the effort of journeying through.
In the first story, "Long Hair In The Attic", we learn a lesson of asking people to appear in a different way, and succumbing to another's desires of what they think we should be.
"Approval" is a tasty piece of undying love, and a valuable lesson in when to let go of that love.
"Beehive" is my least favorite, a strange story of a strange boy who has a symbiotic relationship to bees and wasps.
"Dying Young", one of my favorites, tells a tale of ugly girls who suddenly grow pretty, and the cost of such a miracle to their lives.
"Headless Sculptures", another favorite, shows what happens when a man's artwork becomes more than realistic.
And lastly, "Flesh Colored Horror", is truly the most horrifying story of all, because it shows the horrid lengths a woman will go through to maintain her beauty, even at the cost of abusing her very own child.
A great collection, just be aware that when this book was done, Ito was merely warming up to his full talents. Enjoy!
A must for a horror fan...........2004-03-05
...even if you are not strictly a manga fan. This is some of the creepiest stuff I've seen anywhere, and with a collection of nearly 220 English-translated manga, that's saying a lot.
Gah!.......2003-03-21
Let me say that I am always and I mean always nervous every time I read a manga by Junji Ito. Why? Because they are some of the most screwed up pieces of writing that you possibly can read. the other reviewers have already written in detail about what th stories are about so I won't waste mine or your time going into detail about them, but let me say tha they are all quite disturbing. I would have the rank this book third in the works of Junji Ito that I own, the others being the two vols of Tomie and the three vols of Uzumaki, but the only reason for that is that this collection is a series of short stories that are not related to each other, but let me say the horror of these stories will stick with you and you will gasp in shock when you read them!
Books:
- For Women Only: What You Need to Know about the Inner Lives of Men
- From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition (Family, Religion, and Culture)
- Frontier Woman
- Halfway To Heaven
- Heaven
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Blue Highways: A Journey into America
- The Hand of Chaos: A Death Gate Novel, Volume 5
- History: Fiction or Science
- Interest Rate Models - Theory and Practice: With Smile, Inflation and Credit
- Quilling for Scrapbooks & Cards
- The Complete Taj Mahal
- Raining Cats & Dogs
- My Mother Gave Me The Moon
- Legal Aspects of Architecture, Engineering, and the Construction Process
- Med-checklist: A critical inventory of vascular plants of the circum-Mediterranean countries
Carved in Bone: A Body Farm Novel (Body Farm Novels)![The Body Farm [Scarpetta]](http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B0002EAU7M.01.THUMBZZZ.jpg)
The Body Farm [Scarpetta]
Beyond the Body Farm: A Legendary Bone Detective Explores Murders, Mysteries, and the Revolution in Forensic Science
Bodies We've Buried : Inside the National Forensic Academy, the World's Top CSI Training School
Bones to Ashes: A Novel
