Book Description
To have a home that’s more in touch with the earth, you don’t have to start from the ground up! It’s possible—and more environmentally friendly—to go green by renovating an existing home. With the help of Carol Venolia, an award-winning architect and bestselling author, and Kelly Lerner, a world-famous innovator in the field of sustainable development, even the least mechanically inclined person can make a difference in his or her dwelling…and to the planet. The two have produced a remarkable book—packed with information and photos, and the first ever in full color to cover the subject. It’s lush and exquisite to look at, filled with motivational case studies and informative graphics, and completely user-friendly.
“Some of us would like to become more Earth-Friendly, but we don’t have 10,00 acres in Montana or the passive solar ATM machine to get us the cash to buy the above. Breathe! Center! There is help. Groundbreaking architects, Kelly Lerner and Carol Venolia have just completed a book (to help you). There are plenty of checklists and resource guides to go with all the glossy photos.” -- Kevin Taylor, The Pacific Northwest Inlander
“You don't have to build a new home to have a green home. The book builds on the construction wisdom our forebears used to design homes that capitalized on nature's light, warmth, coolness and other benefits. Venolia and Lerner cover everything from simple changes to complex systems that make a home more ecologically sensitive, comfortable and livable. The book is dense with ideas and information for homeowners considering renovations.” --Akron Beacon Journal
Kelly Lerner is an innovative architect who spearheaded a project responsible for building more than 600 passive-solar-heated straw-bale houses in China. Her designs have been featured in Landscape Architecture Magazine, Metropolis Magazine, The Straw Bale House, and Green by Design.
Carol Venolia specializes in the field of eco-healthy building. Her first book, Healing Environments, has enjoyed international success, and her home designs have been featured in The Natural House Catalog, Earth to Spirit, The Healthy House, and Environ magazine. Carol currently writes the "Design for Life" column for Natural Home & Garden magazine.
Customer Reviews:
good ideas.......2007-10-01
There were many good ideas in this book. Some more expensive than the average person could afford. I read Building Green: A Complete How-To Guide to Alternative Building Methods Earth Plaster * Straw Bale * Cordwood * Cob * Living Roofs; By: Clarke Snell (Author), Tim Callahan (Author). Which was very comprehensive and enjoyable. While Snell and Callahan focus on building from scratch I was more interested at this moment in remodeling. I wouldn't dismiss this book, but I would identify what your needs are first.
Go get it! You will love it!.......2007-09-10
And I am glad I did! I am even gladder to know that more people are waking up to the idea of natural remodeling. I am not sure whether it alone will save our earth but it's a good start. If enough people do it, it will certainly raise the level of our appreciation of nature to a higher level.
We're in the process of buying a house. Having been brainwashed by the mainstream culture and the media, I had grand dreams of huge expansion with piles of the latest and the biggest "goods" we're all programmed to consume - things like an all powerful over sized profession stainless oven even though I would never use it. But I now have a completely different mind set after reading this book.
We've decided to go small and practical and recycle, reuse as much as possible. Let mother Nature live so that we can too!
PERFECTION!.......2007-07-06
I could not put this book down. It answers all of my questions and concerns as I begin to contemplate the large undertaking of creating a healthy, eco-friendly home for our family. Very thorough, creative and well-written... I only wish I could hire these women directly. Just enough information to cover all of the key considerations, with plenty of guidance on how to dig deeper if necessary. Should be required reading for every builder on the planet!
Unconventional remodeling.......2007-06-27
If you are prepared to surround your house with hay bales and hire an expert plasterer from Germany to cover it all up, this may be the book for you. I found it amusing. It is a bit short on the details of how to do more conventional modifications. However, it has a refreshing focus on houses of modest size and provides guidance in rethinking the use of your existing space to get more out of it. There is a lot of attention to the relation of the house to the surrounding environment, sun at various times of day and times of year, and views and so on.
The book did explain what type of new window to buy if you want to continue to benefit from passive solar heat in the winter -- information that may be worth the price of the book to me.
Some good stuff - Some questionable.......2007-06-26
Some of the stuff in this book is good. Much of it is a no brainer such as trees etc. If you are brand new it'll give you some ideas. Some of it is questionable. I've worked on a lot of houses in a variety of jobs. I'm very skeptical about new types of building, for example hay bales. Contractors build homes a certain way because they are tried and true and proven to work WITHOUT GIANT HEADACHES. Hay bales make me nervous. Take it for what it is but then think it out.
Average customer rating:
- Jerry BAker's books are great
- Great book for gardeners!
- Buy only a used book
- Great Green book of Garden Secrets
- Grow your own
|
Jerry Baker's Great Green Book of Garden Secrets: Handy Hints, Timely Tonics, and Super Solutions to Turn Your Yard into a Green Garden Paradise! (Jerry Baker's Good Gardening series)
Jerry Baker
Manufacturer: American Master Products, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 Jerry Baker | Expert Advice | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
General | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
Organic | Techniques | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
General | Techniques | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:
-
Jerry Baker's Giant Book of Garden Solutions: 1,954 Natural Remedies to Handle Your Toughest Garden Problems (Jerry Baker's Good Gardening series)
-
Jerry Baker's Perfect Perennials!: Hundreds of Fantastic Flower Secrets for Your Garden (Jerry Baker's Good Gardening series)
-
Jerry Baker's Old-Time Gardening Wisdom: Lessons Learned from Grandma Putt's Kitchen Cupboard, Medicine Cabinet, and Garden Shed! (Jerry Baker's Good Gardening series)
-
Jerry Baker's Terrific Tomatoes, Sensational Spuds, and Mouth-Watering Melons: 1,274 Super Secrets for Growing Prize-Winning Vegetables (Jerry Baker's Good Gardening series)
-
Jerry Baker's Bug Off!: 2,193 Super Secrets for Battling Bad Bugs, Outfoxing Crafty Critters, Evicting Voracious Varmints and Much More! (Jerry Baker's Good Gardening series)
ASIN: 0922433364 |
Book Description
Gardeners can turn a bare plot into a beautiful paradise with the 1,050 miracle-working solutions, tonics, and tricks collected in this power-packed garden resource. Designed to increase flora growth and reduce animal damage, this guide describes how to create more than 125 garden-fixing elixirs using common household products and illustrates easy and inexpensive solutions to even the most perplexing problems. Readers can discover how to stop moles with chewing gum, revitalize roses with bananas, supercharge plants with chicken bones, and whip weeds with vinegar without undue expense or effort.
Customer Reviews:
Jerry BAker's books are great.......2007-06-27
I liked it a lot. Lots of good, down to earth information and easy to find solutions.
Great book for gardeners!.......2006-11-07
This answers everything from selecting a plant to pests and problems.
Buy only a used book.......2005-11-05
I bought this book through the mail and I wont tell you how much I spent on it. It really does have some interesting facts. A lot of repetitive ideas that can be confusing some times. Some of the tonics and things that I tried made my garden worse. In fact, it burnt some of my plants to the ground! Some of his recipes are confusing. Such as: he recommeds everything in this 20 gallon hose end sprayer. I went to many garden centers and everyone laughed at me. Nobody carries anything that large. that is for a garden the size of Texas! Who are these people that the tonics worked for? Come to my house and help me, then.
Great Green book of Garden Secrets.......2005-09-26
This is a wonderful and practical book. I tried two of the receipes in the book and had instant improvement in the appearance of my indoor and outdoor plants. I will be getting several copies for my gardening friends and family.
Grow your own.......2004-01-16
If you want to have the best "buds" on the block , I "highly" recommend this gem of a book.
Jerry baker is a master of garden secrets. And these are secrets that you will not find anywhere else.
5 stars.
Book Description
One of the world's most influential environmentalists reveals a worldwide grassroots movement of hope and humanity
Blessed Unrest tells the story of a worldwide movement that is largely unseen by politicians or the media. Hawken, an environmentalist and author, has spent more than a decade researching organizations dedicated to restoring the environment and fostering social justice. From billion-dollar nonprofits to single-person causes, these organizations collectively comprise the largest movement on earth. This is a movement that has no name, leader, or location, but is in every city, town, and culture. It is organizing from the bottom up and is emerging as an extraordinary and creative expression of people's needs worldwide.
Blessed Unrest explores the diversity of this movement, its brilliant ideas, innovative strategies, and centuries-old history. The culmination of Hawken's many years of leadership in these fields, it will inspire, surprise, and delight anyone who is worried about the direction the modern world is headed. Blessed Unrest is a description of humanity's collective genius and the unstoppable movement to re-imagine our relationship to the environment and one another. Like Hawken's previous books, Blessed Unrest will become a classic in its field— a touchstone for anyone concerned about our future.
Customer Reviews:
Creating a base of solid ground for The Movement.......2007-10-04
This work by Paul Hawken is so affirming and awe inspiring it should be rated 10 stars. It creates a base of solid ground for the thousands of strands of The Movement to join hands and connect and move out from.
I would suggest reading the introduction to The Appendix first to get an understanding of what Hawken and all who contributed to the effort have accomplished. Browse through The Appendix, discover what it means and what it represents. Then read the last chapter. Then start over at the beginning of the book. As you are reading note Hawken's reminders of the importance of singing and dancing along with all the hard work.
Not only are organizations interwoven in this work, but authors, thinkers, poets whom I have loved through the years are referenced and quoted. Again tying strands together. This book is a blessed gift.
The Unconquered Underground.......2007-09-22
This book surely deserves its nearly universal praise, but I'm going to have to throw a wrench into the works by pointing out a few of its structural flaws. As a widely-read conservationist I can credit Paul Hawken as one of the best modern writers and thinkers on our movement, and his classic "Natural Capitalism" is my absolute all-time favorite from the genre. "Blessed Unrest" will surely be a groundbreaker and it could seriously be influential for millions of people for decades to come. But the proof is actually in the appendix (which takes up more than a third of the book), while the main text is faintly disappointing in a few structural ways. In a nutshell, the relatively short main text covers Hawken's research into the quietly rising social movement around the world of literally millions of small organizations that are combining environmentalism, civil rights, and social justice in ways that are revitalizing democracy, conservation, and the human spirit for volunteerism. Most importantly, this movement utilizes ideas and not ideologies, and is inclusive rather than exclusive.
This is a crucially important topic and Hawken is doing the world a great service by bringing this immense but little-respected mass movement into the light. However, only one chapter in the book's main text ("Immunity") and a few other passages really focus specifically on this great movement and how exemplary groups are creating real change. Instead, most of the main text functions as a lengthy introduction that accomplishes little more than a set-up for the appendix. Hawken fills these pages with a fairly standard history of the environmental movement and the latest developments in conservationist philosophy. Of course this material is informative and necessary, but similar information can be found in myriad other books, and here it becomes quite predictable and detracts from the specifics of the unique worldwide movement that this book is supposed to be about. Thus the book becomes a bit of a disappointment for those who have been attracted by its promotional materials, which promise coverage of the movement itself, not its less specific historical underpinnings.
With that being said, the book is saved by the immense appendix, which is built from the crucial and valuable database of small worldwide organizations at the WiserEarth website. Here we can see the movement in full flower, with a useful categorization of volunteer efforts into a mindboggling array of topics that combine conservation of the Earth's gifts and justice for humanity. This book will be vastly influential merely for drawing attention to this outstanding online resource. Overall, Hawken remains at the top of the heap for influential and inspirational conservationist writers, but just beware of this book's structural limitations. [~doomsdayer520~]
A thought provoking and revealing book, an absolute masterpiece by a genuis.......2007-09-14
After many years of reading, one book stands out, this is it, this is one of the best books that I have ever read, it reveals many truths not found in regular books, like where we are heading as human beings, and about how we are destroying the environment and upsetting the fragile ecological balance of mother earth etc. I've been book marking many pages and am amazed by the wisdom and inspiration of this book.
It mentions how civilizations, species, indigenous people and cultures are being destroyed by greed and materialism, by most of us, it talks about Columbus and colonialism and how it has destroyed entire cultures and civilizations, quote "Native people have remarked that, of the many promises made by white men, the only one that they kept was the vow to take their land"
Most popular books available today are about "How to succeed", "How to make more money" "How to open a franchise" " "How to market", "How to get an MBA" etc, there are very few books on morality, wisdom, truth, divinity, modesty, humbleness, respect, protection of the environment, protection of animals etc.
It reminds us that from our very first day at school, through high school and college, we are mostly taught about making money and materialism, getting and spending etc, we have thus become modern day slaves to banks and the wealthy in the form of mounting debt, we are debt ridden all our lives and it takes a lifetime to pay off this debt, part of the ultimate consumer society.
Today, markets and currencies are manipulated by wealthy nations, and poorer nations are at the mercy of industrialized nations, sadly poorer countries are exploited by trading their minerals, diamonds, gold, raw materials, forests etc. by wealthier nations and are paid for in kind by weapons and armaments, which are then used for committing genocide on their own people while wealthy nations enjoy all the material comforts and luxurious life at the expense of the poor.
Hawkens mentions that businesses talk about adding value and making higher profits to satisfy shareholders, but at what price, profit without consequence is what they are practicing, they do not think about the destruction to the environment and natural resources, the practice of a 'profits at any cost' will lead to a scorched earth, which threatens our very existence on planet earth.
Globalization only benefits wealthy and highly industrialized nations, it results in exploitation of resources in poorer nations, destroying their cultures, natural resources and the environment so that more profits can be made by the wealthy, i.e. profits without shame, the best example is China, which has the worst human right's record and worker abuses bordering on slavery, only a handful of wealthy Chinese folks and the Communist Party are benefiting from it, what a pity. Globalization is the modern day equivalent of imperialism and colonization, sadly the rich get richer and the poor suffer.
Paul Hawkens is a true visionary and a genius, this book has many spiritual insights. it should become a prescribed text book in high schools and colleges around the world.
Bharat V. P.
Ohio (Lenasia, SA)
A RAY OF HOPE IN THIS PROFIT-BEFORE -PEOPLE WORLD.......2007-09-13
I have just read and am happy to recommend Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. " Blessed Unrest" is that restlessness and energy that humans of conscience and good will experience when they encounter such evils as injustice, poverty, and wanton damage to the environment.
Author Paul Hawken posits a worldwide coalescing (aided by the World Wide Web) of over a million grass-roots organizations, non-government organizations, relief agencies, and a few enlightened persons and organizations of wealth and influence (e.g., Warren Buffett, the Omidyar Network), each with its special focus, but all sharing a vision of a healed and equitable earth. He likens this unrest to the body's little understood but marvelously effective immune system
This book is partly about profits-before-people social injustice, and climate change, and it cites at length the many shocking global injustices and environmental catastrophes caused by governments (including ours), transnational corporations, the military, and so on. Although you may know of some such instances, Hawken details many examples you may not have known before, concerning Bechtel, The IMF, Exxon-Mobile and Conoco, the World Bank, The WTO, and many others. For example. he describes at length how the massive peaceful demonstrations at WTO's Third Ministerial in Seattle in 1999 were turned into "riots" by over-reactive police and sensationalist reporting by the media.
Another example: The World Bank forced Bolivia (the 5th poorest nation in the world) to privatize a water system to a company partially owned by multinational corporation Bechtel, resulting in water rates to Bolivia's poor becoming higher than for wealthy Bechtel executives living near San Francisco
Hawken holds up two bright red flags regarding our future. In 2005, the Millenium Ecoystem Assessment report, a consensus representing over 1,000 international scientists, concluded that the earth is rapidly losing its ability to support life as we know it due to pollution and environmental degradation and could soon enter a precipitous decline. The second red flag is the separate and rapidly increasing threat of climate change, a human-caused phenomenon recently emphasized in the media. His conclusion is that in order to preserve and heal the earth, and its climate, we must simultaneously address and heal social injustices, including of poverty, ignorance, biases of race, religion, nationality, and culture.
You may read other reviews of this book by Googling the author and title. Hawken is also the author of Natural Capitalism, which former President Clinton has named one of the five most important books in the world today. In its exposition of the world-wide "underground" massing of forces of social change, Blessed Unrest is the only recent book of this kind I have read that gives me a shred of hope for the future.
One caution: as you read, have a good dictionary at your side, unless such words as eutrophication and fungible are part of your daily word bank. For sure, Hawken has not written Blessed Unrest for Dummies. But please consider reading this book; it is informative, hopeful, and important.
Important Book.......2007-09-08
Extremely well-written, insightful, brilliant analysis of what we're all doing to our planet. Grim, yet optimistic.
Average customer rating:
- Truly Rumi
- who is the beloved?
- almost indescribable
- Amazing
- An outstanding introduction to Rumi!
|
The Illuminated Rumi
Jalal Al-Din Rumi
Manufacturer: Broadway
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Inspirational & Religious | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Middle Eastern | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Ancient, Classical & Medieval | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Eastern European | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Rumi, Mevlana Jalaleddin | ( R ) | Authors, A-Z | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
General | New Age | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
Mysticism | New Age | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
General | Spirituality | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
General | Foreign Languages | Reference | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:
-
One Song: A New Illuminated Rumi
-
Essential Rumi
-
Rumi: The Book of Love: Poems of Ecstasy and Longing
-
The Soul of Rumi: A New Collection of Ecstatic Poems
-
A Year with Rumi: Daily Readings
ASIN: 0767900022
Release Date: 1997-10-13 |
Book Description
Rise up nimbly and go on your strange journey to the ocean of meanings...
In the mid-thirteenth century, in a dusty marketplace in Konya, Turkey, a city where Muslim, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist travelers mingled, Jelaluddin Rumi, a popular philosopher and scholar, met Shams of Tabriz, a wandering dervish. Their meeting forever altered the course of Rumi's life and influenced the mystical evolution of the planet. The bond they formed was everlasting--a powerful transcendent friendship that would flow through Rumi as some of the world's best-loved ecstatic poetry.
Rumi's passionate, playful poems find and celebrate sacred life in everyday existence. They speak across all traditions, to all peoples, and today his relevance and popularity continue to grow. In The Illuminated Rumi, Coleman Barks, widely regarded as the world's premier translator of Rumi's writings, presents some of his most brilliant work, including many new translations. To complement Rumi's universal vision, Michael Green has worked the ancient art of illumination into a new, visually stunning form that joins typography, original art, old masters, photographs, and prints with sacred images from around the world.
The Illuminated Rumi is a truly groundbreaking collaboration that interweaves word and image: a magnificent meeting of ancient tradition and modern interpretation that uniquely captures the spiritual wealth of Rumi's teachings. Coleman Barks's wise and witty commentary, together with Michael Green's art, makes this a classic guide to the life of the soul for a whole new generation of seekers.
Customer Reviews:
Truly Rumi.......2007-08-23
Excellent job of portraying Rumi and presenting appropriate Rumi reminders throughout the year. So glad Coleman Barks is a part of...
who is the beloved?.......2007-04-27
Going through this book was my introduction to Rumi. And a profound one it was. Through the interwoven effect of Rumi's poetry rendered by Coleman Barks and the beautiful images by Michael Greene, I came closer to understanding the Universal meaning of The Beloved and Divine Love.
This book somehow illustrated spiritually cryptic things for me: What does it mean to have compassion for The Other? What does Sacred Interconnection mean? How do we love our selves or others in that secret place where there is no ego, no fear, no illusion?
Take your time with this book. Don't expect results right away. I found that I got some things from it almost immediately... And other things I had to come back to a few times in contemplation, or many times, to really appreciate.
I found it amazing how Michael Green's collages of modern (colliding atomic particle paths), ancient, religious and astronomy photography, brought about inner movement and emotion within me.
A great gift for yourself if you are a Seeker...and also to those of your friends who are, too, whether they know it or are about to find out.
This book has led me to explore other translations of Rumi. Above all, it has helped get me to a greater appreciation of the universality of the Love of God, sans the human limitations that religion, culture, gender or language restrict the word "God" to.
almost indescribable.......2007-04-12
It's often said you can't gain any true 'mystic experience' or 'hidden wisdom' from 'reading a book'. Often that holds true, but things like Rumi are the exception. I'm the sort of person who hates poetry. I relished the accidental "Cruel prank" done on the "Poetry Analasyst" in the late Mr. Vonneget's "God bless you Mr. Rosewater". But, Rumi moves me to joy, to tears to love and to feelings beyond. And this book is an excellent tribute to him. Well worth getting multiple copies, for you will likely loan them to people who'll keep them forever!
Amazing.......2007-01-26
As a lifelong bookworm, I've gotta say: this one is a gem. Incredible illustrations, and a caringly, lit glimpse into the mystery and depth of Rumi. One of those ones you want to pass on to the most special people in your life. The kind of literature that runs against the grain of our aggravating times and quickly reminds us of something higher to aspire to.
An outstanding introduction to Rumi!.......2007-01-05
In the 13th Century, a Moslem scholar, philosopher and poet, from what is now modern Turkey wrote of the human condition The condition hasn't changed and the words still have the same impact as when written. Hence, he remains popular as ever. Perhaps one might think the terms philosopher and poet off putting. This is not the case. He writes in a style to encourage intuitive thinking rather than our usual logical Western style. This is the mode necessary to understand man's deeper nature. It is a style shared by those wishing spiritual and psychological enlightenment. Reading Rumi makes one a more thoughtful deeper person. Curl up with this book by yourself where you are free from distraction and have the time to let your mind wander. You will get nowhere reading this while commuting or watching TV!
This is book is the place to start with Rumi. The illustrations not
only compliment the writing but are picked to give you a psychological study of what is being said. The current translation is the best I have seen for the modern American World. Coleman Bark's translation of an ancient language into our vernacular makes you feel like Rumi wrote the original English version.
Richard Hunter, MD, Behavioral Neurologist, Atlanta.
Customer Reviews:
The Banned Poet.......2004-04-05
Ovid was banished into exile for writing "Art of Love", which is included in this book. It's a sort of versified manual for getting girls and getting "laid" (or to put it more delicately, love-making), full of witty and wise insight. These long poems will stir up romantic feelings inside you. Very worth it. Recommended to readers of Sappho.
David Rehak
author of "Poems From My Bleeding Heart"
Love, Sex and Guns: A Summary of The Amores, by Ovid.......2002-05-06
The Amores, by Publius Ovidius Naso, will leave your loins on fire and your heart as cold as ice. Coming from a time of Roman warriors and Greek gods, Publius Ovidius Naso, better known as Ovid, set the world and its many women on fire. With his mentions of charm and perfect bodies, he captures his audiences' hormones, as well as their imaginations. In The Amores, Ovid expresses sexual reminiscences of a woman named Corrina who may just as well be fictional. He tells us of her beautiful long hair and the body she possesses that is nothing short of perfect. Ovid shares with us his analysis of love as well as life.
Review: Ovid's Amores.......2001-12-04
Review: Ovid's Amores
The three books of Ovid's Amores depict a mockery of the values held during the first century of the Christian era. Ovid attempts to show the world the lack of importance in the great virtues presented in many of the major epics of the time. Amores uses satire to describe the author's wooing of women to waging war. It suggests that Ovid's efforts to romance his lovers are much more essential to life than the battles that are taking place during the time period. In that, he proposes that one should live for the day. Duty and valor are all pointless in the end. These ideas were of course very unpopular with the emperor Augustus. After the writing of one of his works the emperor banished Ovid from Rome.
Ovid was a Roman elegist who expressed a carpe diem attitude during a time where duty and honor were more valuable than life itself. He was born Publius Ovidus Naso in the town of Sulmo (now called Sulmona), near Rome in the year 43 BC. He was a highly educated man, originally skilled in the art of law. However, his passion was for literature and he spent a great deal of his time writing his own works rather than studying the past. His poetry of love probably stems from his own relationships, for by the age of 30 he had married three times and was divorced twice, with rumors of affairs. He lived an extravagant life and was well-it respected by the people of Rome. This high profile Roman life lasted until approached the age of 50 when he was banished from Rome by Augustus. The reasons behind the banishment are unclear. Some say it is a result of a disapproval by Augustus of Ovid's work while others say that Ovid knew too much of a scandal that involved the emperor's daughter Julia. He was exiled to Tomi, in the Roman province of Dacia, and although he never lost his citizenship, he never returned to Rome and died in Tomi in the 17 AD.
Ovid's works can be categorized into three periods: his early works, his middle works, and the works written after his exile from Rome. His works, in contrast to popular works of the time such as Vergil's Aenied, are sharp in contrast. Although his ideas ran contrary to the beliefs of the time, Ovid was extremely popular in Rome. Amores was written in his early period, when the focus of his writings was on love. His middle works concentrate more on mythology and creationism, while his latter works, those written after his exile, have a depressing and bitter tone. He is said to have influence many English writers, including William Shakespeare and John Milton, and was one of the Roman poets with a tremendous impact on the writers of both the Middle Age and Renaissance periods.
During this time period in Rome the emperor Augustus favored and promoted the ideas of honor and duty. Those loyal to Rome were expected to embrace these values without question. Because of this writers such as Vergil gained much approval with the emperor. Their writings embraced these ideas and even portrayed them as being greater than love. Ovid's style and theme in Amores as with most of his writings favors a less dutiful attitude toward life.
Ovid's Amores also known as The Erotic Poems describes the poet's love affair with a woman named Corinna. In a series of three books Ovid depicts the phases of his relationship. He starts buy telling us how he came to write about love, and his encounter with cupid. (...)Corinna becomes the target of Ovid's love. During an afternoon he tells us of a rendezvous experienced with his new found love and spares little detail. As Ovid goes through his tale of love with Corinna he describes many experiences with her that begin to change from beginning to end. Ovid begins comparing his love affair and love in general to the efforts of war. (...) Here we see his analogy of war with love. When Carinna locks Ovid out during the writing of an epic he explains the unimportance of his work. (...)Ovid explains how his words are more effective then the strongest weapons. Poetry can open the doors of any young girl. Ovid's message is clear throughout Amores. Things such as duty and honor should not be worried about. One must live for the moment.
(...)
Ovid- a Master of both the Art of Love and Poetry.......2000-09-30
Ovid, the young dandy none of the most beautiful women of Rome could resist, in the Amores describes his crazy love to the etera Corinna. There is one obstacle to this love. Ovid, as a young artist, lacks money and she is encharged by a rich man for long. The young and charming Ovid, though, meets her secretly. From poem to poem, the Relationship develops. Very funny scenes are to be found, when the young lovers try to avoid the control of Corinna's sponsor, e.g. as the three of them are invited at the same party, or when Ovid discovers that Corinnas erotic skills have increased and learned things that Ovid for his part has not told her. You simply enjoy the light an witty style of the poems. As to the Art of Love, Ovid uses the genre of Didactic Poetry to write a brilliant parody of Love's euphory and melancholy. The "master of love" as he calls himself, particularly teaches us not to take love that seriously- an occasion to flirting is everywhere, and "at first you shall be convinced that every woman can be conquered." The third book is written for women- I cannot say if the advises given are good- but a girl-friend of mine confesses to hate Ovid because he has discovered so many strategies which should not be made public. Also the Art is worth reading as marvellous literature anyway- one of the most funny books about love! The shorter Cures of Love and Facial Treatment for Ladies are only short Appendices, but also nice to read. With all these works Ovid proves to be a master of the art of love as well as of poetry.
Great insight into the Rome of Augustus and Ovid.......2000-04-11
I also give this book 5 stars but for a different reason than the first two reviewers. I do not have a grounding in ancient literature, but, I do have an interest in ancient Rome. Ovid's reputation is that of a sexual rebel in a free wheeling society. Not so on both counts. Ovid used sex and mythology to constantly ridicule Rome's conservative first emperor and his society. But, the literature itself could never convey that to this 20th Century man. Without a better backgound in ancient literature all I could get were some of the sexual references and little else. That's where Peter Green's notes (and the 5 stars) come in. Green parses every important sentence to explain both the translation from Latin and the nuance Ovid was creating. If you don't already have a good appreciation of life in first century Rome, Ovid's writings and Green's notes will explain a lot.
Book Description
Catullus, who lived during some of the most interesting and tumultuous years of the late Roman Republic, spent his short but intense life (?84-54 B.C.E.) in high Roman society, rubbing shoulders with various cultural and political luminaries, including Caesar, Cicero, and Pompey. Catullus's poetry is by turns ribald, lyric, romantic, satirical; sometimes obscene and always intelligent, it offers us vivid pictures of the poet's friends, enemies, and lovers. The verses to his friends are bitchy, funny, and affectionate; those to his enemies are often wonderfully nasty. Many poems brilliantly evoke his passionate affair with Lesbia, often identified as Clodia Metelli, a femme fatale ten years his senior and the smart, adulterous wife of an arrogant aristocrat. Cicero later claimed she poisoned her husband.
This new bilingual translation of Catullus's surviving poems by Peter Green is fresh, bawdy, and utterly engaging. Unlike its predecessors, it adheres to the principle that the rhythm of a poem, whether familiar or not, is among the most crucial elements for its full appreciation. Green provides an essay on the poet's life and literary background, a historical sketch of the politically fraught late Roman Republic in which Catullus lived, copious notes on the poems, a wide-ranging bibliography for further reading, and a full glossary.
Customer Reviews:
Less romantic than I expected.......2006-02-19
I got this book as a xmas gift from my mom. She picked it out from my wishlist. I've studied much Latin, but I completely skipped over Catullus as an undergrad. That's why, I put a Bilingual edition on my wish list rather than just an English translation. I wanted to get a real feel for the actual poetry.
I'm not very familiar with Catullus and I honestly thought that there would be more romantic love poems throughout the book. I think that it was a good thing that there were more 'vulgar' poems in the book because they left a strong impression and because they made those rare instances of romantic poetry stand out more brilliantly. Personally, my favorite poem was about Catullus thinking about his home. It really resonated with me because I have travelled so much.
I think that this is an excellent intermediate level Latin book and that if you haven't acquainted yourself with Catullus, this is the method to do so!
kittie
Amazon.com
"Months afterwards she would remember that morning with dismay, when she had sat with them for the first time, as though they were at home there: drinking from cups like welcome guests ... and only the part of her, the part that didn't laugh with them, thought: Could these hands, serving coffee, be the ones that planted the booby-trapped doll at the gate of the religious school at the end of the street?"
In the stories of Israeli author Savyon Liebrecht, personal relationships can't help but become political. In "A Room on the Roof," an unnamed Jewish woman hires three Arab workers to build an addition onto her house while her husband is out of the country. So paralyzed is she by her fear of Arabs, she is unable to recognize the essential decency of these particular men; on the rare occasions when she is able to see past her own blind bigotry, the realization that her workmen are human beings with their own set of hopes, fears, and prejudices is so terrifying that she becomes even more strident in her intolerance.
Though a few of the stories in Apples from the Desert are directly concerned with interactions between Jews and Arabs, the collection is, in fact, more about how Israelis deal with each other. The Holocaust is the unmentioned elephant in the drawing room, for Liebrecht, herself the daughter of concentration camp survivors, is particularly interested in the impact that tragedy has had on the children of survivors. In "Hayuta's Engagement Party," everyone fears that Grandpa, a Holocaust survivor, will ruin this festive occasion (as he has many others) with his grim recitals of death-camp atrocities. The protagonist of "'What Am I Speaking, Chinese?' She Said to Him" returns to her childhood home in Poland in order to stage a sexual encounter in the same room where her parents--again Holocaust survivors--once argued about sex.
If the Holocaust is one theme running through most of these stories, the position of women in modern Israeli society is another. Many of the women--especially older ones--in Liebrecht's stories are in oppressive marriages with men who neglect, ridicule, and sometimes physically abuse them. In "Compassion," a Jewish woman who was hidden from the Nazis in a Catholic convent as a child marries an Arab man who eventually imprisons her and takes a younger wife. Victoria, the mother of a rebellious daughter in the collection's title story, only recognizes the depths of her own marital misery when she sees the loving relationship her child has formed outside the legal bonds of matrimony.
There is nothing subtle about Liebrecht's stories, and readers accustomed to the finely tuned ironies of an Ann Beattie or Alice Munro may find these stories a trifle emphatic. However, anyone interested in the literature coming out of Israel today will find Savyon Liebrecht's window on the land and the people illuminating, if sometimes uncomfortable reading.
Book Description
   Savyon Liebrecht's intense, lyrical, and emotionally complex stories have made her a best-selling writer in her native Israel. Her short fiction explores the everyday tragedies that emanate from strained relationships between Arabs and Jews, women and men, older and younger generations in present-day Israel. According to the
Washington Post Book World, her "engrossing and skillful tales take you through the lives of real people, to the heart of their emotional and moral being." Liebrecht reveals the impact of larger social and political conflicts within the private world of the home with a precision and a subtle ferocity reminiscent of the work of Nadine Gordimer. "These finely wrought stories of private lives shed light on a terrifying political conflict", notes the
New York Times Book Review. "[Liebrecht] takes you places you've never been before."
The Helen Rose Scheuer Jewish Woman's Series
Customer Reviews:
a sense of doom and hope.......2007-05-07
Savyon Liebrecht's collection of short fiction, Apples from the Desert, here culled from three short story collections, and here translated from the Hebrew, is extraordinary in its range and depth. Liebrecht takes on a variety of issues which confront modern Israelis: the divide between Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews, the oppression, both subtle and profound, of women in Israel's patriarchal society, the Arab Israeli conflict, the long shadow of the Holocaust. Reading these stories, it becomes quickly apparent to the reader which "issue" Liebrecht is going to tackle in each story. But the stories do not have a programmatic feel about them; Liebrecht never allows the moral to muddle her attempt to create a certain strained atmosphere and foreboding sense doom. Apples from the Desert is relentless both in its social critique and a penetrating analysis of what all fiction is about, what it means to be a human being in a harsh world.
very deliberate allegories.......2003-02-11
These stories are the equivalent of being hit on the head with a literary sledgehammer. The points that they make (the Arabs as The Other, the Holocaust as having an impact on modern Israeli society, etc.) are pretty obvious to anyone who has any knowledge of Israel or Jewish history. They occasionally read like writing class exercises, actually.
That being said, the stories are a good window into Israeli society and show elements which you don't see on the news. For excellent Israeli literature, though, I'd have to recommend Yaakov Shabtai, Amos Oz or A.B. Yehoshua.
Feelings expressed so well in mere words!.......2002-08-17
This is a wonderful book of short stories which contradicts the sterotypical picture of Israelis so often portrayed in the nightly news. It shows (mostly from the female point of view) the nuances of many types of Israelis, from religious to secular, from Ashkenazi to Sephardic, from Arab to Jew. In particular, it brings out the human side of each of its characters and demonstrates that feelings change from time to time and situation to situation. These are beautiful studies of human interaction.
I have four favorite stories. In "A Room on the Roof", a woman's husband goes to Texas, and she decides to build a new room on the second story of her home while he's gone. Her Jewish contractor leaves her alone with three Arab laborers during the construction process. She is not sure to how to react to their presence near and in her home. "The Road to Cedar City" tells of an Israeli couple (Hassida and Yehiel) and their son Yuval who are traveling in the United States when their rented car breaks down. The wife is unhappy when she learns that she must share a ride in a minivan with another young Israeli couple and their baby who are from Jerusalem. A talkative minivan driver further complicates matters by running his mouth during the entire trip. "Mother's Photo Album" is about a Dr. Joshua Hoshen who looks into his mother's medical record after she is hospitalized in a mental institution. He pieces together her life from what he reads in her record and uses a photograph to help resolve his anguish about what he discovers. A most notable story is "The Homesick Scientist" in which eldery Zerubavel wlcomes his nephew, a well-known Israeli scientist who lives in the United States, as he returns to visit Israel after 21 years. His nephew had frequently spent summers with Zerubavel after Zerubavel's own son Uri had been killed while on reserve duty. Zerubavel, although he had eagerly anticipated his nephew's visit, isn't sure what his nephew's motives were for returning after such a long absence.
Great writing about the things that really matter.......2001-03-11
Great, tight, vivid, exact writing about the Important Things (universal concerns, issues, and feelings) in the mood of a calm and astute observer/chronicler -- with soul. Perfect. Although these stories are primarily concerned with Israelis, I encouraged an East Indian friend to read "The Homesick Scientist"; it spoke to him so deeply of his own private experience that he immediately ordered the book (from Amazon, of course).
Lovely set of short stories.......2000-10-14
This is a collection of 12 lovely short stories published in Israel between 1986 and 1992. Savyon Liebrecht is a child of survivors from the Holocaust and like many other children from parents who underwent the same experience, she had to deal with the trauma of the past which most often meant trying to understand and live with the "silence" from her forbears. Not only is this fact reflected in her stories, but she also addresses the problems in the interaction between Israelis and Arabs, as well as between Israelis themselves. Her stories reflect the influence of political and social conflicts in daily life and family structure. The author has a very honest approach to those conflicts, with a direct and simple style, most outstanding for its feministic and humane touch.
Customer Reviews:
A great translation of a great work.......2001-11-19
Juvenal, is by far one of the greatest writers of the Roman era. His biting style and keen insight is a pleasure to read, and has not lost its appeal after the long years since it was written. Many of the subjects that Juvenal lashes at with his sharp wit are still apply today (government corruption and decadence among others).
However, Juvenal clearly wrote his satires for the era of the roman empire, not the 21st century, and his refferences often fly over the reader's head. The translator has done a fabulous job in explaining these details in the copious notes at the back of the book. It is highly suggested that one reads sections of the notes before reading those sections in the satires to gain the greatest understanding.
Cynical, pessimistic, ugly, haunting, bawdy, and oh so true.......1999-07-11
Juvenal was a misanthrope who looked around at the people he saw in ancient Rome and decided that most people were dishonest, corrupt, obsessed with sex, stupid, cheaters, etc. It's an ugly picture but hard to argue with as people are pretty much the same now. There are some masterly depictions here and some very good common sense, too. Not a pick me up. More like a "pull you down". Still worth reading to confirm your worst suspicions and also as an antidote to much positive thinking nonsense.
Book Description
The Classic Story of a Family's Pilgrimage
into the Orthodox Church
Veiled in the smoke of incense, the Eastern Orthodox Church has long been an enigma to the Western world. Yet, as Frederica Mathewes-Green discovered, it is a vital, living faith, rich in ritual beauty and steadfast in integrity. Utilizing the framework of the Orthodox calendar, Mathewes-Green chronicles a year in the life of her small Orthodox mission church, eloquently illustrating the joys and blessings an ancient faith can bring to the worshipers of today.
Customer Reviews:
Started slow....but a wonderful surprise overall.......2007-09-12
I confess: when I first started reading this book, I was very turned off by all the chit-chat about the goings-on of people in the author's church and life. For instance in the first few pages, we meet "Basil," who says things like: "Ya taking inventory?" as the little church body sets about converting a rented room into an Orthodox sanctuary.
I also thought, at first, that author Mathewes-Green was treating her faith very lightly -- too lightly -- almost as if she was making fun of it. She takes us through one particular service this way: "Basil's son, Michael, then leads us in chanting forty 'Lord, have mercys,' running the words together Byzantine style: 'Lord have mercyLordhavemercyLordhavemercyLordhavemercy,' he intones."
Shortly after, we read: "At this point the booklet instructs the worshippers to make a prostration. We fold where we are standing, dropping to our knees, a process that takes longer for some than others. ... A prostration is a shuffly process. ... Another prostration here. More shuffling."
I must say, I was thinking: the audacity!
But I kept on reading. And I was shamed. Humbled. And then hooked. Author Frederica Mathewes-Green sure showed me a thing or two about faith. Hers, and the faith of those around her, shined brightly and compellingly to this seeking-heart Protestant.
There are many moments throughout the book where I was stunned by the beauty of God and of her love for Him and of the treasures within Orthodoxy. I will not share them here -- I want you to discover them for yourself, like I did! And I wound up caring very much for all the "characters" that make up her life: would that I, too, could find such a family!
All in all, I do highly recommend this book. It will take you inside the life of Orthodox believers -- through their services, fasts, feasts, faith, fathers...in a way I have not yet seen another book do. This may be as close as you can come to "being there" without actually having attended Orthodox services.
Yet another American Orthodox conversion story with a Protestant evangelical feel.......2007-07-18
I give this book two stars for the author's sincere account of her conversion to Orthodoxy. Unfortunately, if you have little attraction to conservative, American Protestantism, this book may not draw you to Orthodoxy. Yes, the author has converted to Orthodoxy, but a conservative, Protestant ethos pervades the book. (Actually, this book is really part of a genre, written by conservative Protestants who come to Orthodoxy because they feel their previous faith-traditions have not been conservative enough). The result is that Mathewes-Green gives facile and rather uncharitable critiques of feminism and Anglicanism, and her exposition of Orthodoxy tends to be doctrinaire. I am deeply interested in Orthodoxy and occasionally attend the Divine Liturgy, but the ex-Protestant converts in the congregations sometimes put me off with their exclusivist and over-zealous approach...I am far more comfortable with the "cradle" Orthodox from traditionally Orthodox countries. One can't of course expect Orthodoxy to be incredibly progressive and liberal, but the Protestant fundamentalist "baggage" that so many North American converts bring to Orthodoxy can stifle a breadth of vision.
Deeply Personal, Very Human, Very Important.......2006-10-25
I think this book is very important to anyone interested in the Orthodox Church. It's not the only book you'll want to read, but it supplements the other great books out there in a unique and important way.
This book is not a treatise on Thology or practice. There are a number of good books available to cover these topics. Instead, it's a personal memoir. It tells the story of a woman, a family, and a congregation as they come into their faith and tradition. There's the feel of conversation over a cup of coffee here as Mrs. Mathewes-Green talks in an engaging and humorous style about the experience of discovering a faith and building a church. It takes something that can be very intimidating - the discovery of an ancient and deep faith and tradition that is very alien to modern American culture - and makes it very human and very accessible.
If you want to get right into Theology, History, Spirituality, and Practice, Read Biship Kallistos Ware's "The Orthodox Way(Spirituality)," "The Orthodox Church (History)," Clark Carlton's "The Faith (Theology)" and some of the other great books available. These are all important. The most important piece of exploring Orthodoxy, however, is to "come and see." Experience the worship and life of the Church. It can be intimidating at first, however. But Mathewes-Green makes it so much more accessible. Give it a try!
Interesting, yet disappointing.......2006-06-12
At first glance in the store, this book fueled my interest in the Orthodox Church. Further, the easy style of writing made me feel very comfortable. However, upon purchsing the book and diving-in, I was soon put-off my the author's frequent caustic remarks about the Episcopal Church, my own denomination. Not only did these remarks add nothing to the book, but simply showed that the author still has unresolved issues of her own concerning the denomination she left to join the Orthodox Church. These put-downs simply took away from her work and credability.
While her account of falling in love with the Orthdox liturgy and the "truth" she found in this denomination, nothing is said about ortho-praxis, or the "right-practice" of the faith. I hear about a lovely liturgy with an actient tradition behind it, but nothing about what her church is doing to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned. In other words, I was left with the sense that the Orthodox church was a lovely museum piece with little active engagement of the Gospel in the broken world in which we live. "Faith without works is dead," and I'm left with an impression that the Orthodox church is lovely and old, but dead. While it is my hope that this is not the case, one would not know it from simply reading this book.
Further, while the author uses a very reader-friendly style, there are times you think she wishes she had the talent of Anne Lamott to convey her faith at a no-bones heart-level. The author can't quite pull that off.
While an enjoyable read about a woman's story of coming to the Orthodox church, it has a few serious flaws which detracts from the picture she would like to paint.
Wordy but Worthwhile.......2006-03-06
This books shares a year in the life of an Orthodox mission church from a first-person perspective. It is certainly not a weighty theological treatise, and though a bit "chatty" at times (especially the first half of the book), it provides the reader a good look at an Orthodox congregation in action. If you want to know about the doctrines and apologetics of Orthodoxy, this is not the book for you.
Book Description
In the year A.D. 8, Emperor Augustus sentenced the elegant, brilliant, and sophisticated Roman poet Ovid to exile--permanently, as it turned out--at Tomis, modern Constantza, on the Romanian coast of the Black Sea. The real reason for the emperor's action has never come to light, and all of Ovid's subsequent efforts to secure either a reprieve or, at the very least, a transfer to a less dangerous place of exile failed. Two millennia later, the agonized, witty, vivid, nostalgic, and often slyly malicious poems he wrote at Tomis remain as fresh as the day they were written, a testament for exiles everywhere, in all ages.
The two books of the Poems of Exile, the Lamentations (Tristia) and the Black Sea Letters (Epistulae ex Ponto), chronicle Ovid's impressions of Tomis--its appalling winters, bleak terrain, and sporadic raids by barbarous nomads--as well as his aching memories and ongoing appeals to his friends and his patient wife to intercede on his behalf. While pretending to have lost his old literary skills and even to be forgetting his Latin, in the Poems of Exile Ovid in fact displays all his virtuoso poetic talent, now concentrated on one objective: ending the exile. But his rhetorical message falls on obdurately deaf ears, and his appeals slowly lose hope. A superb literary artist to the end, Ovid offers an authentic, unforgettable panorama of the death-in-life he endured at Tomis.
Books:
- One Day, All Children: The Unlikely Triumph of Teach for America and What I Learned Along the Way
- Peace at Any Price: How the World Failed Kosovo (Crises in World Politics)
- Practical Sigil Magic: Creating Personal Symbols for Success (Llewellyn's Practical Magick Series)
- Princess Academy
- Raising a Modern-Day Knight: A Father's Role in Guiding His Son to Authentic Manhood
- Real Musgrave's Whimsical World of Pocket Dragons: A Collectors Handbook (Collector's Choice)
- Royal Assassin (The Farseer Trilogy, Book 2)
- Saint John's Bible: Prophets
- Search for Senna (Everworld, 1)
- Shadows and Strongholds: A Novel
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Madame Bovary
- Discovering Computers 2007: A Gateway to Information, Complete
- The Impressionists' Paris: Walking Tours of the Artists' Studios, Homes, and the Sites They Painted
- There's a Fly on My Toast
- Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book for Digital Photographers,The
- Biology of Cancer
- Broken Music: A Memoir
- Vilhelm Hammershoi and Danish Art at the Turn of the Century.
- To Honor the Earth: Reflections on Living in Harmony With Nature
- Why Worry When You Know God Is in Control
Green Remodeling : Changing the World One Room at a Time
Green Building Products: The Greenspec Guide to Residential Building Materials
Good Green Kitchens
Good Green Homes
The New Ecological Home: A Complete Guide to Green Building Options (Chelsea Green Guides for Homeowners)
