APA Engineered Wood Handbook

Book Description

*The only comprehensive reference available on glue-engineered wood composites
*Utilizes the International Building Code 2000 throughout
*Includes specifications, codes, design issues, application methods, charts and tables, and details never before found in a single reference

Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism

Average customer rating:

Challenging but flawed
Thought-provoking, powerful book
The Well is a distorted mirror...
Bell makes it known, racism will always exist. Sad isn't it
Much-needed realism concerning race relations!

Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism
Derrick Bell
Manufacturer: Basic Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0465068146

Book Description

Imagine America on the first day of the 21st century. At the break of dawn, a thousand space ships descend from the sky, landing on the shores of the East Coast, bearing treasures of gold, safe nuclear power and detoxifying agents that could pay all debts and save the earth's environment. In exchange for these goods, guaranteed to rescue America from the excesses of its past, the Space Traders want just one thing -- to take all African Americans back to their home star.

What would our leaders do? White Americans were once capable of rationalizing Black slavery; would they be capable of justifying the trade of all African Americans to space, to improve their own lot on earth?

The situation is a chilling fantasy. But for Derrick Bell, the prominent civil rights activist and former Harvard Law School Professor, the danger is very real. In Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism, Bell uses allegory and historical example to argue that racism has always been an integral, permanent and indestructible component of American society.

Customer Reviews:

Challenging but flawed.......2004-05-21

This is a challenging but flawed book. This book is well researched and uses court cases to show the permanence of racism within American society. He brings up this points in a narrative style that is meant to challenge the reader not only on the basis of his facts but how those facts fit in with American society.
However, his characters become stereotypes themselves. One can see the roles that each of the characters in the story is supposed to play. His fiction continues the beliefs that he attempts to criticize.
Even with this flaw, this book is an important book and should be read by those who are concerned with racism.

Thought-provoking, powerful book.......2002-09-23

Bell is a true storyteller. He possesses the ability to capture your attention and keep you riveted and engaged. This book provides powerful, enlightening "accounts" of racism in America. Every American of every race, nationality, religion, creed and sexual orientation should read this book.

The Well is a distorted mirror..........2002-03-31

Harvard Law Professor Derrick Bell's book, Faces At the Bottom of the Well defines America's racial divide in terms of the book's subtitle; "The Permanence of Racism". Throughout the book, he uses fictional settings to illustrate his theory.

Derrick Bell was a controversial professor at Harvard Law, until he left over the school's refusal to hire a black female law professor. Harvard argued that other applicants had much stronger backgrounds and credentials, but Bell, a strong proponent of race based preferences, claimed that "diversity considerations" outweighed any "purely academic requirements."

After leaving Harvard, Bell was subsequently hired by NYU's Law School, where he continues his dual career as law professor and writer/activist.

Two of Bell's most vivid fictions involve blackmailing Space Aliens and a fictional land call Afrolantica. In the first scenario, the Aliens demand that all the blacks in America be handed over to them, so that they can be taken back to their planet. They refuse to divulge what they intend to do with America's black citizens. In exchange the remaining Americans will be given enough gold to eliminate taxes for a year and the technology needed to eradicate all of the effects of pollution. There is also the hint of violence if America's blacks aren't turned over.

In the second scenario, a fantasy about a fictional land called "Afrolantica," an island upon which only black people can survive and where white people can't even breathe, starts a controversy. Some blacks argue that all American blacks should move there and start their own nation, many whites support that plan.

Bell asks some interesting questions with this book, "How deep are the ties that bind us a nation?"..."How close to the surface are our grievances and distrusts?"

The problem with Bell's thesis is that it is limited by its complete one-sidedness. To Bell an Irish-American who seeks to live in a predominantly Irish neighborhood, or a Chinese-American who decides to reside in China Town, NYC are suspected "racists," while a black-American who chooses to reside in Harlem is not.

Contrary to Bell's assertions, the fact that most people identify with one ethnic group or another is merely a fact, not an indictment. That many people feel more comfortable among people more "like them" than not, is not an indictment either. What Derrick Bell is most guilty of is "Special Pleading" or perceiving anything that benefits "his side" or his point of view, as "good" and all that runs counter to that, "bad." As a result his writing takes on a harsh and bitter tone that often makes him appear as guilty of the bigotry he condemns in others.

If Bell's intention was to use the image of "the well" as a mirror, in order to force his readers to examine the racism that continues to exist, he has failed, because his own bitterness colors his arguments with decidedly racist observations and attitudes.

Bells' strength lies in asking questions, his weakness is that he offers no answers and in fact accepts the inevitability of racism. His writing pales in comparison to other contemporary scholars who've dealt with the isue of race in America, such as Thomas Sowell and Walter E Williams.

Bell makes it known, racism will always exist. Sad isn't it.......1999-02-02

After reading this book, Professor Bell became one of the main reasons I chose to attend NYU School of Law. Bell poignantly tells the story of an oppressed race through allegory that at once is entertaining and educational. Two stories in particular made such an impact that I still feel it a full 5 years after reading the book. The first, Afrolantica, focused on the accomplishments that African Americans can make when working toward a common goal. The ending points out that if African Americans focus and produce we can achieve anything, even the seemingly impossible by using cooperation and productivity. The last story literally reduced me to tears. Though the premise was a little far-fetched it brought home to me the realization of African Americans' importance (or lack their of) as people with hearts, minds and souls to those that form the majority in this country. At first it left me feeling hopeless, but then it made me want to fight harder. And after having met the Professor Bell and sat in his classroom I am certain that my later reaction is what he was after. The other stories are definately worthwhile also, but I point to these two because of the profound emotional effect they had on me. A must read for the believers and non-believers of the theory that racism is so ingrained in American society that it can never be eradicated.

Much-needed realism concerning race relations!.......1998-08-02

Professor Bell takes the bold step of examining, and relating, a crucial truth about US society: the oppresion of people of color has been, and remains, integral to the maintenance of this society as we know it. Using a number of fictional vignettes that containing an alarming amount of reality and possibility, he demonstrates how--contrary to the naive belief that the country is making so much progress--African Americans (and others of color) will continue to be used for the purposes of European Americans and their desire for control. In a particularly harrowing story entitled "The Sapce Traders," Bell portrays a deal, made between the United States government and and alien race, to trade all African Americans in exchange for new fuel and gold reserves and environmental aids. Indeed, the apsect of the story that requires the greatest excercise of imagination is the existence of the traveling aliens; the description of how this government and society would ! use African Americans for their own purposes is all-too believable! Those of all races who would examine this country and themselves should read this book at the first opportunity!

Summerour: Architecture of Permanence, Scale, and Proportion

Average customer rating:

A wonderful reference tool for the modern classist

Summerour: Architecture of Permanence, Scale, and Proportion
William R., Jr. Mitchell
Manufacturer: Golden Coast Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Criticism | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

Catalogs | Catalogs & Directories | Reference | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0932958249

Customer Reviews:

A wonderful reference tool for the modern classist.......2006-12-21

The work of Keith Summerour is a great example of a modern day use of traditional proportion, scale, and precedence. The design concepts portrayed in his architecture bring to mind exquisite works of architecture built over 100 years ago. Keith Summerour is able to bring old world techniques into play in the 21st century and is therefore able to acheive a level of detail that distinguishes him from the majority of architects practicing today.

This Place on Earth: Home and the Practice of Permanence

Average customer rating:

Not Acknowledged by NEW but still Thankful of Home Thunder
Not just for Northwesterners
Well written but could have been so much more
One of the most important books of 1996

This Place on Earth: Home and the Practice of Permanence
Alan Thein Durning
Manufacturer: Sasquatch Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Conservation | Environment | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

General | Conservation | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 1570611270

Amazon.com

Alan Durning spent several years traveling the world as an environmental policy analyst. When a Filipino tribeswoman asked him to describe his home, he found that he could not, answering weakly, "In America, we have careers, not places." Determined to change all that, he brought his family to his native Northwest to make a home--by which Durning means learning the geology and ecology of a place, as well as its human present and past. Durning looks into matters such as recycling, urban planning, and community building, and he proposes ways in which we can all tread a little more lightly on the earth, especially by sharing goods and knowledge with our neighbors. This is a lively, hopeful addition to the literature of place.

Book Description

Simplify, downshift, sustainability. What does it all mean? Alan Durning returns to his home ground to consciously carve out a new life away from the mainstream of politics and power. This Place on Earth is both a personal journey and a working blueprint for anyone interested in a better life.

Customer Reviews:

Not Acknowledged by NEW but still Thankful of Home Thunder.......2003-09-30

In retrospect, when I look back on my "hungry" journey, few pillars of existing heart and knowledge-base re-affirmed my personal hope for the future more than this very rich resource.

Not surprisingly "This Place on Earth: Home and the Practice of Permanence," by Alan Thein Durning of www.NorthwestEnvironmentWatch.org, become a resource so rich for this organization that further works would expand directly from the chapters within. Infact, it is still going on today.

In my opinion, Alan's Worldwatch Institute journey storied at a very local level (the Pacific Northwest) is a vital element to each individuals own learned journey in the context of their own life and view. It is heartening, as I write that this work continues.

Thank you to Alan and his dedicated staff and sponsors.

Sincerely,

Dennis Patrick Kain

Not just for Northwesterners.......2000-08-08

Having recently moved to the Northwest, this book is great in covering the history in a way that few books do. Although I don't agree with everything he says, he's got some very valid points. Interwoven in the story of "place", is his personal story, and it fits in very well. I liked this book enough I will probably actually buy it (the one I have is from the library) so that I can loan it out to friends. Besides being specifically about the Northwest, the book's premise can be transferred to other areas as well, the idea is you relating to your part of the earth and to your community.

Well written but could have been so much more.......1998-11-23

Durning pulled his punches on several topics in this book, depriving readers of his valuable insight on some of the most controversial topics in the environmental movement today. The two most glaring examples of this are his cursory discussions of immigration and abortion. He doesn't discuss whether we should address the environmental impacts of immigration, or even write about whether these impacts actually exist. And although Durning goes into great detail about his wife's precarious health during her second pregnancy and his own fears about overconsumption in the US, Durning doesn't dive into why he and his wife decided to carry to term their third pregnancy instead of aborting. Durning has written extensively and eloquently on the problems of overconsumption in the US, it would have been very enlightening to see how Durning reconciled their decision to have a third child with his environmental convictions.

One of the most important books of 1996.......1997-01-22

Durning has written a fascinating book that examines the potential of the Pacific Northwest bioregion and the people that live there. This book demonstrates that the personal is political, and shows readers how his/her own impact on the planet can be lessened. It is, by far, one of the most important books written in 1996, and one of the most important books that you can read in the year ahead

Beauty, Health, and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States, 19551985 (Studies in Environment and History)

Average customer rating:

Beauty, Health, and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States, 19551985 (Studies in Environment and History)
Samuel P. Hays
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Environmental Science | Earth Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0521389283

Book Description

Bringing together a wide range of environmental issues that have been debated since the mid-1950s, this book views these issues as a result of changes in values in American society since World War II. The author explores such substantive issues as pollution, natural lands, chemical carcinogens, and population-resources balances. He examines the politics of environmental science, economic analysis, planning, and management, and traces the impact of environmental issues on local, state, and federal government. The book explores political controversy to shed light on the working of political institutions and to establish their relationship to social change.

A Splendor of Letters: The Permanence of Books in an Impermanent World

Average customer rating:

An amazing study of issues critical to bibliophiles
The Last of a Splendid Trilogy
A Work Of Learning And Passion Celebrating The Written Word
Excellence in the Finale
Informative and Entertaining

A Splendor of Letters: The Permanence of Books in an Impermanent World
Nicholas A. Basbanes
Manufacturer: HarperCollins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Antiques & Collectibles | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

General | Books & Reading | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

History of Books | Books & Reading | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0060082879
Release Date: 2003-11-25

Book Description

In A Splendor of Letters, Nicholas A. Basbanes continues the lively, richly anecdotal exploration of book people, places, and culture he began in 1995 with A Gentle Madness (a finalist that year for the National Book Critics Circle Award) and expanded in 2001 with Patience & Fortitude, a companion work that prompted the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and biographer David McCullough to proclaim him "the leading authority of books about books."

Basbanes now offers a consideration of the many pressing issues that surround the role of books in contemporary society, such as the willful destruction of books and libraries in Sarajevo, Tibet, and Cambodia, and the spirited efforts to restore them. The matter of "discards" at various libraries takes on an entirely new dimension as well, with fully researched stories about the kind of attitudes that may lead to the loss of “last copies” of important works.

In vivid detail, Basbanes examines the many materials that have been used over the centuries to record information -- among them clay tablets, papyrus scrolls, slabs of stone, palm leaves, animal skins, and hammered sheets of gold and copper. Also discussed are the various debates that continue to rage about preservation, which may mean saving and storing books on paper indefinitely, or as electronic data, which are by nature ephemeral.

In this beautifully packaged edition, Nicholas Basbanes brings to a close his wonderful trilogy on the remarkable world of books and bibliophiles.

Customer Reviews:

An amazing study of issues critical to bibliophiles.......2004-04-14

A Splendor Of Letters: The Permanence Of Books In An Impermanent World by Nicholas A. Basbanes is an absorbing contemplation of issues concerning books in contemporary society, ranging from the destruction of books and libraries in Sarajevo, Tibet, and Cambodia; to the matter of "discards" at various libraries; the many types of materials used to record information from ancient times down to the modern day; debates about preservation whether in regard to storing books on paper or keeping them in electronic format; and so much more. An amazing study of issues critical to bibliophiles worldwide today, A Splendor Of Letters is a seminal and impressive work which is most especially recommended to the attention of dedicated bibliophiles, cultural historians, and Library Science reference collections.

The Last of a Splendid Trilogy.......2004-01-28

Nicholas Basbanes has enriched the lives of bibliophiles with his A Gentle Madness and Patience and Fortitude, the first two volumes in this trilogy devoted to books and the people who love them. He has now brought the trilogy to a close with A Splendor of Letters, which is just as fascinating as either of the first two volumes.

A Splendor of Letters is a wide ranging look at many aspects of the book world. History is served through an examination of several attempts to destroy the written word, from Nazi Germany to Pol Pot's Cambodia; and with happier stories of archaeologists' rediscoveries of ancient libraries. More stories of book collectors of the sort that made A Gentle Madness so interesting are also provided, as is more material on the problems libraries and collections have when they run out of space and must determine what to do with the overflow, which was a major topic in Patience and Fortitude. The main thrust of A Splendor of Letters, however, is a defense of the book in its traditional form against those who would proclaim its death at the hands of technology.

As with all of Mr. Basbanes' works (which also include Among the Gently Mad, A Primer for Book Collectors), the fascinating material is enhanced by the beauty of the writing. No book lover should pass this by.

A Work Of Learning And Passion Celebrating The Written Word.......2004-01-13

Reading the works of Nicholas A. Basbanes is somewhat like attending a series of lectures by a master professor, one who loves his subject passionately and seems to know every aspect of it. In this volume, as in the preceding works of his trilogy, Mr. Basbanes takes you around the world and back in forth in time, yet the journey always has a constant purpose: to explore the many ways in which humankind has transmitted its thoughts in written form.

A central theme of this work is the many assaults on the written word through the ages, and their ultimate triumph of survival. From the destruction of Carthage to the Nazi book-burnings and the more recent destruction of libraries in Tibet, Cambodia, Sarajevo, the written word has again and again been one of the prime targets for those who wish to subjugate a people. Yet for all that has been lost through violence and neglect, much has been preserved.

Here Basbanes turns to threats to books of a different sort--libraries discarding little-used volumes because of space issues, or various electronic technologies that have been heralded as being the replacement for the codex, or bound book, as we have known it for centuries. Yet the book endures, and if enough people with the passion of Nicholas A. Basbanes are around, it should endure for countless years to come.

This book and its two predecessors represents an educational, entertaining and thought-provoking distillation of a career spent learning about and celebrating the written word. Although "A Splendor of Letters" marks the completion of his trilogy, I hope this will not be the last word Mr. Basbanes has to share on the subject. And I'm sure many other readers feel the same way.--William C. Hall

Excellence in the Finale.......2003-12-28

I've truly enjoyed Mr. Basbanes books and this one is no exception. Mr. Basbanes is clearly in love with the written word, even as it happens to be found in between the covers of the book we've come to recognize. As Bookreporter.com remarked, this book can be somewhat disjointed, but it's one of the reasons I fell into reading it with such joy.

This book isn't a scholarly work in the sense that it will bore the eyebrows off of you. To those persons I read sections, they found the material intriguing and interesting. Two of those persons are now on a waiting list at the local library to read it. (Which is quite astonishing when one considers that these persons aren't regular book readers, let alone a bibliophile as I am...)

I certainly cannot bring any additional information to the excellent review by Bookreporter.com. As someone who loves reading, books, words, etc. I feel that those persons that own Basbanes' first books in the trilogy, this final book wouldn't be a waste of your time and money to add it to your collection.

"A Splendor of Letters" is entertaining, informative and enlightening. I'm quite pleased it resides in my personal library.

Informative and Entertaining.......2003-12-07

Nicholas A. Basbanes has a love affair going with the printed word. Not just the book --- the printed word, be it chiseled on stone 2,000 years ago, scrawled on wallpaper, palm leaves or cloth, or even imprinted on a computer screen the day before yesterday.

That is the main message delivered in this, the third of a trio of books he has written celebrating the triumphs, tragedies, perils and potentialities of print. A SPLENDOR OF LETTERS, a kind of miscellaneous grab bag of print-talk, was preceded by A GENTLE MADNESS (1995) and PATIENCE & FORTITUDE (2001). Truly, a man obsessed with his subject.

A SPLENDOR OF LETTERS is a book full of fascinating bits of information on all sorts of subjects relating to the printed word. This is at once its main attraction and its principal drawback. Much of the information packed into these pages is interesting in itself, but the book has no single overarching theme, seemingly no real purpose except to display the author's enthusiasm and interest for his subject.

Among the many topics touched upon in this bag of scholarly/literary potato chips are the disappearance of many important texts produced by ancient civilizations; the question of whether a modern copy of an ancient book can or should replace the original; the wanton destruction of valuable libraries in places like ancient Carthage, Nazi Germany, Sarajevo, Cambodia and Tibet; the morality of physically mutilating books in order to turn their valuable illustrations into objects of commerce; the morality of breaking up great library collections so their contents can be sold off for cash to meet current needs; the best means of preserving printed records for the longest time; and --- inevitably --- the already looming question of whether electronic books will make the familiar object we hold in our hands today a mere museum curiosity anytime soon.

Basbanes tries hard to be objective about all of this. He has sought out people on all sides of every question he considers --- but his sympathies obviously seem in the end to lie with the preservationists and the physical book rather than with its electronic doppelganger.

Every new development in the advancement of print has been greeted, he assures us, by people who saw it as the end of literature. He has resurrected a Medieval monk named Johannes Trithemius, who urged his fellow monks not to stop copying manuscripts by hand just because printing had been invented ("The written word on parchment will last a thousand years. The printed word is on paper. How long will it last? The most you can expect a book of paper to survive is two hundred years..."). And even so modest a modern forward step as the idea of equipping pencils with rubber erasers rang alarm bells among educators ("the easier errors may be corrected, the more errors will be made").

Basbanes seems thoroughly at home rummaging around in the distant past to describe fascinating documentary finds in odd corners of Egypt, Pakistan and similar remote places. His tales of great modern-day book collectors are also interesting. And he devotes much of the latter part of his book to the computer-vs.-physical book controversy, reporting for instance that computer files are proving to be a terrible means of preserving data because the swift pace of technological advance in computerdom quickly makes obsolete whatever machines could read them when they were created. And he has uncovered a delightful quote from someone named W. T. Williams back in the 1980s --- that is, in computer terms, back in prehistoric times: "Man is the only computer yet designed which can be produced entirely by unskilled labor."

A SPLENDOR OF LETTERS is informative and entertaining. The only problem with it is trying to answer the question: What, exactly, is it about?

Customer Reviews:

A keystone work in the field of rhetoric and social theory.......2000-12-04

"Permanence and Change" was first published in 1935, revised in 1954 (which included the appendix "On Human Behavior Considered 'Dramatistically'") with an afterword "Permanence and Change: In Restrospective Prospect" added by Burke in 1984. This third edition also reprints Hugh Dalziel Duncan's introduction. This volume is the second in Burke's "first trilogy," which started with "Counter-Statement" and concluded with "Attitudes Toward History," and I should express my preference for these earlier works over the latter ("Rhetoric of Motives," etc.) because of their greater depth and breadth of conceptualization.

In "Permanence and Change" Burke establishes the ways in which "form" permeates society as much as it does the arts. Consequently, even when we look at forms are art we are not dealing exclusively with aesthetics, but with more rhetorical notions of form of which we should be aware. Part I "On Interpretation" works from Veblen's concept of "Trained Incapacity" to establish the connection between rationalization and orientation. This leads to the idea that motives are shorthand terms for situations, the interpretation of which are thwarted by the "occupational psychosis" of the individual. Here is where you get your best sense of Burke as providing a synthesis of Freud and Marx. Part II "Perspective by Incongruity" is perhaps the key section for me in all of Burke's writing, especially given the degree to which I embrace the concept. The goal of which is to create new meanings that are progressively more "real." Part III "The Basis of Simplification" advocates "the poetry of action" as the ideal conceptualization of the interpretive process. As always, the scope of Burke's use of evidence, both in the literary and critical worlds, is astounding. "Permanence and Change" is a key work in the field of rhetoric and social theory.

Average customer rating:

Not Free SF Reader

good, bad and ugly

Cardboard characters and unengaging plotting

Amateurish and artificial

Not As Good As Ventus

Permanence

Manufacturer: Amazon Remainders Account
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Similar Items:

Ventus Ventus

Lady of Mazes

Sun of Suns (Virga)

The Engine of Recall

Glasshouse

ASIN: B000F6Z75W

Book Description

Young Rue Cassels of the Cycler Compact -- a civilization based around remote brown dwarf stars -- is running from her bullying brother, who has threatened to sell her into slavery. Fleeing in a shuttle spacecraft from the sparsely populated and austere comet-mining habitat she has lived in her whole life, she spots a distant, approaching object, and stakes a legal claim to it. It is not the valuable comet she hoped for but something even more wonderful, an abandoned Cycler starship.Her discovery unleashes a fury of action, greed, and interstellar intrigue as many factions attempt to take advantage of the last great opportunity to revitalize - and perhaps control - the Compact.This is the story of Rue's quest to visit and claim this ship and its treasures, set against a background of warring empires, strange alien artifacts, and fantastic science. It is a story of hope and danger, of a strange and compelling religion, Permanence, unique to this star-faring age, and of the re-birth of life and belief in a place at the edge of forever.

Customer Reviews:

Not Free SF Reader.......2007-09-04

A fairly straightforward space adventure. A girl from a small backwater joint escapes from her brother who basically wants to sell her into servitude.

While on the lam she stumbles across a rare alien spaceship, and meets up with a relative on another planet.

A mission to get to the ship and claim it turns into struggle and conflict between different political groups.

Schroeder satirises the rabid corporate copyright/drm/activation software mentality here by having one group actually live their whole lives like this, with their basic 'inscape' view of reality showing objects by their costs and rightsholding, so a rose would show it was worth 24.23 rather than look like a rose.

good, bad and ugly.......2005-01-31

The author is intellectually entertaining with the cultural background of this novel, if you like that sort of thing, and I do, but that was also the novel's downfall.
As others have discussed here, the two human civilizations were separate because FTL ships couldn't be launched from brown dwarf stars, where the cycler humans live. Without revealing the ending, the author built a scaffold that supported the cycler civilization as "better" than the FTL civilization, then ...
No, I can't say anymore, except that, in the end (to solve a plot problem he had painted himself into,) he tried to have it both ways, and I can't image human beings accepting his solution when another exists.
All of the criticism from others about flat characters and "deus ex machina" solutions to problems, I agree with. Actually, the solution to the plot problem that I can't go into without revealing the ending is classic "deus ex machina."

Cardboard characters and unengaging plotting.......2004-12-24

I bought this book following a paper enthusing about some of its ideas in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS Jan/Feb 2005). Unfortunately, I have to agree with earlier reviewers who have highlighted a pedestrian writing style, implausible 'characterisation' and character motivation, and the unengaging 'by numbers' plot development.

I abandoned the book at page 78 as unreadable, not something I do often. My advice to the author is to read the books which you just can't put down, and really think about how their authors achieve that effect. Even in plot-driven stories, the characters have to be real and must be able to invoke empathy from the reader.

Amateurish and artificial.......2004-06-20

I'm sorry to say, I couldn't bring myself to finish this one. The ideas behind the novel are somewhat interesting; not fascinating, just enough to make you go 'Hmm.' Once you marvel at the civilization Schroeder built around brown dwarfs, all you're left with is a poor plot that is childish and amateur.

There's something annoyingly artificial about the way the characters are written. They go along with mad ideas just because the plot requires a crew for the protagonist's quest. The events that litter the book seem dangerous on the surface, but feel like book-padding, and are never really engaging.

One example is Max, the protagonist's cousin. He somehow shows up at the start of the novel, and conveniently turns out to be very rich, which conveniently solves the heroine's problems. Not only is he rich, but he also conveniently won the lottery, so there's nothing to explain about it. Such events occur at a maddening frequency, painfully linking what certainly sounded like good plot points in a synopsis.

I hate to downright bash a novel, but this one should have been reworked and re-edited before it hit the shelves.

Not As Good As Ventus.......2004-06-10

Schroeder's Permanence is about a young woman's discovery of a cycler -- a ship that goes a significant fraction of the speed of light while it travels in a big loop and is used for trade -- of mysterious origins. It doesn't take long for Rue Cassels and a handpicked, though motley, crew to discover that the mysterious ship is of alien origin...and that she's not the only one that wants to gain control of it.

Schroeder's Permanence leaves something to be desired, though not in the story itself. The story itself -- the alien ship and all the resulting discoveries relating to it -- is reminiscent of a Jack McDevitt novel. Where Schroeder's Permanence doesn't muster up is in the way the prose itself was put together. The first hundred or so pages the pacing feels all wrong...kind of fast, like Schroeder was rushing to get to the meat of the story. The characterization of the more minor characters leave quite a bit to be desired. I never got to know much of the crew Rue picks to join her in her rush to discover the alien ship's secrets. You just kind of meet them and then they become cardboard, shrinking into the background until Schroeder needs them to pop up occassionally. The novel's title, Permanence, comes from a future religion/social structure in which humanity is trying to put together a civilization that will survive the eons. But Schroeder only uses one primary character (Mike) to let us into this unusual idealogy of Permanence. While Mike does give us much to think about, I didn't really feel like it was enough to really get the overall picture of what Permanence really was supposed to do/be about.

Overall, this story was not nearly as good as Schroeder's previous book, Ventus. Ventus was wonderfully original; and the prose seemed much better structured as well. Ultimately, this novel feels like it was written in haste to meet an editor's deadline and if one chooses to read this book one should keep that in mind.

Average customer rating:
Quest for Permanence: Symbolism of Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats
David Perkins
Manufacturer: Harvard Univ Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0674742001

Average customer rating:

A new look at literature

Why Literature Matters: Permanence and the Politics of Reputation
Glenn C. Arbery
Manufacturer: ISI Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books | Classics | Comic | Contemporary | Literary
General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
General | Foreign Languages | Reference | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1882926595

Book Description

Contemporary confusion over the role and importance of traditional literary texts invites us to reconsider why literature matters in the first place. Through an examination of the work of poets and novelists who have managed to garner honor—including those whose canonical status is assured, like Shakespeare, Homer, and Emily Dickinson—and those whose reputations are of more recent vintage and therefore more difficult to evaluate, such as Tom Wolfe, Seamus Heaney, and Toni Morrison, Glenn Arbery explores this question with elegant prose and subtle criticism. Arbery argues that the importance of literature can be traced to several fundamental factors, including the poetic mode of knowledge offered by literary form, the intrinsic pleasure experienced when “world becomes word,” and the multiple, complex layers of reality—and their anagogical meaning—revealed by great literature.

Customer Reviews:

A new look at literature.......2001-11-03

Glenn Arbery is one of those critics who can always keep the global picture in view. Intelligent and profoundly feeling, he sets high standards for what qualifies as "literature" -- traditionally understood as any writing which has the capacity to illuminate and surprise, teach and delight, in a lasting way -- though he's not exactly elitist. Arbery writes for the commonweal as much as the academy, and has that enviable gifted intuition to know real literature on sight.

Arbery begins by examining three contemporary writers -- Tom Wolfe, Seamus Heaney, and Toni Morrison. With merciless severity, he skewers Wolfe as a cartoonish fool lacking any concern for the subtleties of literary fineness. In fact, the first chapter of this book may well have been entitled "Why 'A Man in Full' is Overrated, Sophomoric Trash".

Arbery then examines the poetry of Seamus Heaney and the fiction of Toni Morrison by way of contrast to someone like Wolfe, showing why they stand as fine examples of modern literature. He disagrees, for instance, with the critics of Toni Morrison, arguing that her literary honors owe not so much from favor with modern liberalism (unlike those of Alice Walker, with whom Morrison is "often unjustly tied"), but rather because of the inherent achievements of her fiction. "Impatient with 'race' as a supposed ontology, powerfully intelligent, Morrison does not promote the 'black experience' so much as she questions its meaning and locates it thoughtfully within an American literary tradition that prominently includes Hawthorne, Melville, Faulkner, and Flannery O'Connor... Morrison finds universal qualities with her subjects, because she chooses, not Us-vs-Them, but Us-vs-Us situations". Instead of angrily demanding social justice, Morrison engages the social drama of modernity and "tests dominant ideas by showing what happens when they unfold in plausible human action". In this sense, Morrison achieves literarily what a writer like Walker cannot.

After an examination of Shakespeare's Othello, Arbery concludes that the play "raises to the level of tragedy questions of identity that have become more acute in the centuries since Shakespeare", while at the same time cautioning against reading the play simply in terms of American issues of race and mixed marriages. One senses that Shakespeare had nothing against mixed marriages per se, though his advice nevertheless seems to have been an unswayable "Don't try it!", as a universal ethic of love proves (time after time) to be at odds with the necessities of politics.

In an interesting chapter on "the intelligence of feeling", Arbery takes issue with the literary critics who tend to drive a wedge between the analysis of art and the feeling it engenders. It won't work, says Arbery. One cannot paraphrase parts of a novel or poem and have it mean the same thing as what is experienced in the moving continuum of the entire writing. Feelings help us understand what the writer "wants to say" in a way that conceptual recognition alone cannot reach. Arbery cites neurologist Antonio Damasio in arguing that reason, paradoxically, is rooted in emotions and feelings -- and furthermore that, "unseemly as it might be to trace poetry down into neurochemical substances, what goes on in the experience of literature has to be considered as an extremely complex physical process."

The best chapter is the last one entitled "The Sacrifice of Achilles". Arbery rightly recognizes The Iliad as the measure of every form of literature in the Western canon, and he proceeds with a lengthy and visceral analysis that leaves the reader tongue-tied. I'll say no more, save that if you're unfortunate to have never read Homer (or if you've only given him a superficial reading pursuant to the demands of high-school), you'll be left with a craving to plunge right into the savage world of Achilles, ride his glory, and experience alongside him that ultimate humiliation and loss called mortality.

This book -- arresting, challenging, and gratifying all at once -- is a serious achievement which should be read by anyone interested in the lasting value of modern and ancient literature. If you think you don't like literature, give this book a try. It may change your mind.

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books