Book Description
Anthropology has a long history of the "other," yet we can look right here at home for the strangeness we seek. We often neglect to ask the questions that reveal our own culture's underlying value and beliefs. In this volume, we bring the American culture into focus. For readers to understand the full impact of ethnography, to experience cultural relativity and to gain a foundation to build informed comparisons, readers need a firm grasp of their own culture--and need to use this volume. The Third Edition consists of 19 essays written by anthropologists and other scholars using an ethnographic perspective. The essays enable readers to understand themselves better by focusing on their own culture and seeing it from a new perspective. This collection gives anthropology a comparative perspective that provides a reflective lens, a mirror, for understanding ourselves and the world in which we live.
Customer Reviews:
Great condition, prompt delivery.......2005-09-23
Book was in great condition and the service was very promt in delivery.
Book Description
Covering more than one hundred years of American history, Walls and Mirrors examines the ways that continuous immigration from Mexico transformed--and continues to shape--the political, social, and cultural life of the American Southwest. Taking a fresh approach to one of the most divisive political issues of our time, David Gutiérrez explores the ways that nearly a century of steady immigration from Mexico has shaped ethnic politics in California and Texas, the two largest U.S. border states.
Drawing on an extensive body of primary and secondary sources, Gutiérrez focuses on the complex ways that their pattern of immigration influenced Mexican Americans' sense of social and cultural identity--and, as a consequence, their politics. He challenges the most cherished American myths about U.S. immigration policy, pointing out that, contrary to rhetoric about "alien invasions," U.S. government and regional business interests have actively recruited Mexican and other foreign workers for over a century, thus helping to establish and perpetuate the flow of immigrants into the United States. In addition, Gutiérrez offers a new interpretation of the debate over assimilation and multiculturalism in American society. Rejecting the notion of the melting pot, he explores the ways that ethnic Mexicans have resisted assimilation and fought to create a cultural space for themselves in distinctive ethnic communities throughout the southwestern United States.
Customer Reviews:
Well written, hugely informative.......2003-11-14
David Gutierrez' book is one of the most informative, thorough books available on the Chicano experince in the US Southwest. This book is not just for activists or chicano studies scholars. If you have ever wondered why immigration policy exists in its present form, or why racial tensions still persist within the southwest, read this book. It is very densly packed with valuable infomation and excellent sources, and it presents such information in a fairly unbiased manner. This is an impressive work of research that should be in the library of every house in America.
One of the most important books in Chicano history.......2001-02-26
This book truly marks a turning point in Chicano history by interrogating the similarities and differences between Mexican nationals and Mexican Americans in the U.S. The metaphor of Walls and Mirrors sums up the relationship between immigrants and longtime U.S. residents: they shared cultural, labor/class, and daily social ties, but political and civic goals divided them.
This book, then, is a political history that examines the importance of both legal and cultural citizenship in Texas and California communities. It looks at the impact of the Cold War, agribusiness labor needs, and civil rights struggles on debates over immigration at both the local and national level.
Excellent book by David Gutiérrez.......1998-02-07
David Gutiérrez has written a unique and fantastic book on the Chicano experience in America. Fantastic read, and as a U-M Wolverine who has heard David Gutiérrez speak in person, I can say it is worthy of the praise it has received. The man knows his material!
Average customer rating:
- Excellent Artwork!!
- Spectacular art and a tool for transformation.....
- HE LOVED IT & So did I
- I got it to be a bettet yoga teacher!
- Sacred Mirrors
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Sacred Mirrors: The Visionary Art of Alex Grey
Alex Grey ,
Ken Wilber , and
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Manufacturer: Inner Traditions
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Binding: Paperback
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Alex Grey 2008 Calendar
ASIN: 0892813148
Release Date: 1990-09-01 |
Book Description
This unique series of paintings takes the viewer on a graphic, visionary journey through the physical, metaphysical, and spiritual anatomy of the self. From anatomically correct rendering of the body systems, Grey moves to the spiritual/energetic systems with such images as "Universal Mind Lattice," envisioning the sacred and esoteric symbolism of the body and the forces that define its living field of energy.
Includes essays on the significance of Grey's work by Ken Wilber, the eminent transpersonal psychologist, and by the noted New York art critic, Carlo McCormick.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent Artwork!!.......2007-05-07
This book is filled with incredible art by Alex Grey. The only problem with the book is the fact that it is listed on Amazon as a HARDBACK and it is not. This is no fault of the artist but Amazon should be sure to correctly list their products.
Spectacular art and a tool for transformation............2007-04-25
Alex Grey's art is unique, provocative, visionary and striking. The anatomical detail, overall composition and beauty is uplifting. While this type of art may not be everyone's cup of tea, it is undeniably creative and powerful.
This book is based on a series of paintings that are approximately 6'0" tall. They were meant to be used as a mirror for an individual to experience different aspects of themselves. In other words, to serve as a lens for a different perspective on what it is to be human. In general, the book proceeds from an outline of the body made up of elements, through the skelton system, blood vessels, nerves, etc. What is unique is that it goes beyond this to subtle and causal realms based on the experience of Alex Gray and the testimony of various mystics. It is meant to evoke awareness of these more subtle dimensions and even in book form could be used for meditations.
This book also contains images of Jesus, the Boddhisattva of infinite compassion and other enlightened beings. Again, these are meant for contemplative experiences where you look for these energies in yourself as part of a contemplative practice. There are also some beautiful images of a couple kissing, making love, a small family, etc. These latter category of images are similar to the cover in that they represent the various spheres of Being from the gross body through the spirit.
This book is on the large side, is printed on very high quality paper and contains a lot of color plates as well as contextual information. It is a bargain at the price it is being sold and some of the text is written by Ken Wilber.
If you are not familiar with Ken Wilber's work, either Kosmic Consciousness or A Brief History of Everything would be a great place to get started. Either of these resources will help you to appreciate Grey's art in more depth and understand what he is trying to achieve.
HE LOVED IT & So did I.......2007-02-19
I bought this for my fiance because he LOVES Alex Grey and He LOVES TOOL. He absolutely loved the book and actually I DID TOO!!! If you are a fan of either or (Alex Grey or Tool) it's a MUST BUY!!!
I got it to be a bettet yoga teacher!.......2007-02-08
the images of sacred body - energy currents are incredible! Nowhere else will you find this kind of anatomical imagery. This is an incredible book. Alex Grey is a genius!
Sacred Mirrors.......2007-02-05
Alex Gray is amazing for having created pictures for the energy fields of the body as well as the body itself and the way it operates. This book is a wealth of knowledge that can be utilized to help heal yourself or use it to help teach for a wide spectrum of modalities.
Amazon.com
In this sweeping historical narrative, Barbara Tuchman writes of the cataclysmic 14th century, when the energies of medieval Europe were devoted to fighting internecine wars and warding off the plague. Some medieval thinkers viewed these disasters as divine punishment for mortal wrongs; others, more practically, viewed them as opportunities to accumulate wealth and power. One of the latter, whose life informs much of Tuchman's book, was the French nobleman Enguerrand de Coucy, who enjoyed the opulence and elegance of the courtly tradition while ruthlessly exploiting the peasants under his thrall. Tuchman looks into such events as the Hundred Years War, the collapse of the medieval church, and the rise of various heresies, pogroms, and other events that caused medieval Europeans to wonder what they had done to deserve such horrors.
Book Description
"Wise, witty, and wonderful . . . A great book, in a great historical tradition." Commentary
The 14th century gives us back two contradictory images: a glittering time of crusades and castles, cathedrals and chivalry, and a dark time of ferocity and spiritual agony, a world plunged into a chaos of war, fear and the Plague. Barbara Tuchman anatomizes the century, revealing both the great rhythms of history and the grain and texture of domestic life as it was lived.
Customer Reviews:
Contrived and Boring.......2007-10-03
Ms. Tuchman, who was generally a first rate author and whose works I usually find absorbing, must have been strapped for subject matter for a new work when she wrote this tome as I found it incredibly boring and contrived, partially because, imbued with the modern prejudice born of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, I find this era uninspiring, if not culturally backward, and because of the tedious way she focused on one particular relatively obscure individual from a minor principality.
Moreover, Tuchman's theme that somehow this era is uniquely a distant reflection or cousin of our own more than any other isn't one that leaps to my mind at all. Rather, I would think if any era comes close to holding that distinction, of having a similar zeitgeist, it would be the "modern" era of Late Republican Rome, emerging victorious from global like conflict against its imperial rival Carthage (whose final defeat was effectuated though a major act of genocide) and ruled over by a Senate and abused by usurping dictators etc. Isn't it telling, for example, that 20th Century fascism adopted the stiff armed salute of the Roman Army and that the term dictator, reflecting a constitutional office under the Roman Republic, has truly come into its own infamous notoriety in our own time.
For a more easily readable and enlightening book on medieval history, culture and mythology I suggest Thomas B. Costain's "The Magnificent Century" about the previous century to the one addressed by Ms. Tuchman with such labored tedium.
Wrong Title.......2007-06-14
You get tired of one name: de Coucy. The book should have been titled "Enguerrand VII, Lord of Coucy." I slogged through it. Seems he and his issue were everywhere at once, to quote an old AbFab episode: "...beside the rich and famous, behind the rich and famous, under the rich and famous..." When Barbara Tuchman could get off her favorite subject of his lordship, she would get back to the 14th century and was quite entertaining and informative about how you would live your life in that time. Yes, she used him as her north star to keep the book anchored, but you pretty much got tired of him halfway through the book and wished Edward had cut off his head or the Black Death had got him. Had the book been advertised as a history of the de Coucy family instead of a history of the 14th century I would have been more forgiving. She really needs to retitle this book.
A Narrative History.......2007-05-13
I have to say that this book turned out to be a really nice surprise. I found it in a used bookshop in Buenos Aires for 10 pesos and thought what the hell, I already knew a bit about the 14th century from a class I took in university and figured I could stand to learn a bit more. As soon as I began reading it I knew I had found a rarity among history books, an informative and actually an exciting read! This stems from the style employed by Tuchman. Having chosen the area she wanted to cover, namely Western Europe in the 14th century, she needed something to provide a focus and uniting thread. For this she took the somewhat unusual approach of selecting not a person of royalty, a religious figure, or a member of the lower social class, but a noble that has the advantage of straddling in various ways all three of the aforementioned roles. Her noble, the Lord of Coucy, holding lands in the realm of northern France in the area of Picardy was an extraordinary figure by any consideration, involved in almost all the major military, political, and religious events of his. Of course it helped his cause that the three spheres so often, if not always overlapped in his day. Come to think of it, it still seems like those three spheres overlap quite often in our own age. Funny how history has a way repeating itself, or as it has been said, history never repeats itself, men always do.
The 14th century was a time of profound change and upheaval for the people of Europe. A long and destructive war was waged between the Kingdoms of England and France, known to posterity as the Hundred Years War, which was to leave both countries and much of Europe devastated long after the fighting had stopped. During the middle of the century a new terror descended on all the peoples of Europe, the Black Death or Bubonic Plague. Sparing neither rich nor poor, devout nor unbeliever, the great wave of death that swept through Europe multiple times in the last half of the century killed around half the total population, which was not to recover its 1300 level until around the 1550's. So terrible was the Black Death and its consequences that it was simply known as the `great mortality' to the people of the day. To throw one more destabilizing agent in the mix, the later half of the 14th century also gave rise to the Pope's leaving of Rome in favor of a new residence in southern France at Avigion. This eventually lead to what is known as the papal schism, where for a time there were rival claimants to the papacy with one residing in Rome and one in Avigion, with the countries of Europe forced to take sides between them. For a time there were even three Popes at once. In a world destroyed by war and death, people looked to God for answers and when they found a split Church more corrupted and ungodly than ever change was only just around the corner.
Tuchman does a wonderful job of tying together the major events of the time around a narrative centered on Coucy. More often than not he is certainly a part of these events. Throughout the narrative are sprinkled social, economical, religious, and further historical background, painting a vivid picture of the life in France and England, and to a lesser extent the Italian states, the Holy Roman Empire and the Iberian kingdoms at the time. To this extent I think that Tuchman's book is a success. As with all narrative histories though there are evitable flaws. To say that one event leads to another in an continuous flow of cause and effect, especially when it is centered around one character, is to deny and miss a lot of areas of constant interaction of multiple forces that help to shape and form that particular time in history. The tendency shown by Tuchman to attribute actions to individual leaders, personalities ,and whims seems to me to be a throwback to the ancient historians of the classical world.
Another flaw that I see is taking the life of a noble as a representation of the time. A noble by definition is a person set apart from the masses of humanity. To think that the Lord of Coucy or any of his associates in anyway represents what most people of the time experienced is to be deceived. He was primarily concerned with his own class, namely the ruling class, and the power that was derived from the position. Tuchman does much to paint him as a brilliant, enlightened man ahead of his time in many ways. That may be true to some extent but it is nevertheless also true that he used all the means available to him to exploit those of a lower class, as did all in the ruling class.
Even though I have criticisms for the book, I still believe it carried out its function well, namely to illuminate that age of European history often known as the Dark Ages. The choice of narrative as the vehicle for the history has its limitations as stated above but it also has many positives as well. Anyone looking to gain a preliminary understanding of this very eventful time would do well to pick up Tuchman's book. I can only guarantee that it will whet the appetite for a deeper search into the age.
A Distant Mirror.......2007-04-18
Even a brief summary of all Barbara Tuchman's themes would lead to several pages. A Distant Mirror tries to describe the major political and religious machinations of 14th century Europe. Her constant is Enguerrand Coucy VII, a prominent noble, kingmaker,diplomat and warrior of the time. Coucy attracted Tuchman's attention because of his atypical eminence. He was one of the few lords who was not deceitful, barbaric, vainglorious or libertine. The times forced him to make some crucial choices as to which king and pope deserved his support. (He chose French in both cases.) But, his thoughtfulness, sincerity and success as an honest broker and fierce commander enable him to stand above the dreadful examples of humanity that attempted leadership of the 1300s.
This was a time when provincial warlords struggled for power and influence. Many knights were mercenaries or roving brigands. Church corruption was entrenched. Commoners were overtaxed to pay for wars, crusades, tributes or ransom. The Black Death kept the population well below levels of the previous century. An exasperating aspect of this history is how little most of the principals learned about governance or warfare. They were continually arrogant, parochial, greedy and treacherous.
Ms. Tuchman's history encompasses scores of characters- most of whom I will never read of again. I do wish she had put the most notable into a brief biographical compendium so the reader could refresh his memory as to their particular deviance. One of the pleasures of A Distant Mirror is reading Tuchman's acerbic comments about these horrid people and their times. I will close with a typical Tuchman comment regarding the Christian kings' defeat by the Turks. They were trounced because most of the warlords wanted singular recognition for heroism and refused military cooperation. "Vainglory, however, no matter how much medieval Christianity insisted it was a sin, is a motor of mankind, no more eradicable than sex. As long as combat was desirable as the source of honor and glory, the knight had no wish to share it with the commoner, even for the sake of success."
The very best book by Barbara Tuchman.......2007-04-05
Tuchman is a great historian. She has a way of explaining things that is very bright, clear and interesting. And this particular book I consider it to be her best. The 14th century is full of events, begining with the black plague that killed one third of the European population . She found a way of connecting these events through the life of one nobleman, Engerrand de Coucy.
Book Description
On the 35th anniversary of his death comes the definitive biography of rock 'n' roll legend Jimi Hendrix-by the New York Times bestselling author Charles R. Cross oinciding with the 35th anniversary of Jimi Hendrix's tragic death in 1970, Room Full of Mirrors is the definitive biography of rock 'n' roll's greatest guitarist. Meticulously researched and based on more than 300 interviews with those who knew him best-more than half of whom have never spoken about him before-this landmark book recounts the entire arc of Hendrix's life, from his troubled childhood in Seattle's projects and the early loss of his mother to his struggles against racial prejudice as a young musician and his rapid ascent to the top amidst the swinging London scene, and finally to the apex of his career headlining Woodstock in 1969, with his death occurring a year later.
Customer Reviews:
Great on life. Music not so much. .......2007-08-16
I think for what this book set about to be it's easily "4" or "5." The author wanted to write about Hendrix's life -- almost half the book is before he becomes a rock star. I really enjoyed the scenes set in his early days -- stuff we don't know so much about, like touring the South with Little Richard. However, it seems to me if you write a biography about someone as God-like as Hendrix there should be moments of higher level of stylistic interpretation regarding what exactly his music is.
What Hendrix did was profound. He turned thew combination of Blues and psychedellic rock into something that simply did not exist until then. (Ok, there was Clapton, but. . . no time for qualifiers.) His sound was not just something people listened to. The Hendrix sound is the soul of a world in transformation.
If you read, for instance, "LAST TRAIN TO MEMPHIS" about Elivs's early years, a lot of what the book is about is how this magical swirl of cultural forces in Memphis in the early 50s transformed America. ROOM FULL OF MIRRORS is basically just about the very interesting life of one man who was a big rock star and a great guitarist.
The Premier Jimi Bio.......2007-08-12
If you take the time to read through all of the reader reviews on this book, you'll see a broad diversity of opinion. Charles Cross managed to ruffle more than a few feathers it seems. Without a doubt, Cross dug deeper into Jimi's early years and got closer to the people that were a part of Jimi's formative years than any other journalist.
The criticism that Cross failed to expose anything new about the fame years is valid but ultimately unimportant. The fame years were witnessed, glorified and documented by many and they are somewhat mythical in their presentation of the grandeur that collapsed into demise. But if one tries to understand what drove Jimi to be what he became, all other bios fall short. I remember wondering how this gifted kid could possibly know and breathe the blues as he did. The easy answer was that the lack of a stable childhood and his mother's early death were the source of Jimi's blues and no doubt they were part of the picture. But Cross spells it all out much more clearly and gives the story coherence and resonance. By elucidating the genesis of the genius, Cross manages to do what no other Jimi biographer has accomplished - and that is he brings the roots of Jimi's pain to life and in doing so shows the source of energy that provided his incredible drive. I thank Charles Cross for bringing closure to so many questions that had been swirling in my mind for well over thirty years.
Worthy effort, but misses a lot.......2007-07-14
Cross makes two important contributions: 1) As others have noted, there's a lot of new information about Jimi's early life and the first 100 pages or so give a a very moving picture of his childhood. 2) The book makes clear how important Jimi's Seattle background was to his multicultural outlook, which is what made him willing and able to cross established boundaries more easily than if he had been born in raised in say the South or Northeast.
The rest of the book is fairly perfunctory stuff and Jimi's music is pretty much absent. Cross presents music as something Hendrix only thought about when he tired of cavorting with groupies and assorted low-lifes.
I'm also docking the book a star for not having an adequate bibliograpy.
Amazing.......2007-05-25
This book gives you such a close glimpse at Jimi's upbringing and inner visions and stuggles that you feel one with him. I couldn't put this book down and hope to come across more like this. Mr. Cross does a fantastic job uncovering the life of the greatest guitarist in history.
purple haze.........2007-05-08
a hard hitting look at the legend of Jimi Hendrix..I haven't read a whole lot of biographies of Jimi so I couldn't really compare this to any other biography but I was mesmerized and totally engrossed in this story and the wonderful way it's written..from his hard childhood. to his army days and his breakout as a musical icon..highly recommended..
Book Description
c
Customer Reviews:
The contagious paranoia of counterintelligence..........2006-01-01
The term, "wilderness of mirrors," is still used today in counterintelligence circles to denote the feelings of paranoia that sometimes develop in the byzantine business of spyhunting, when one is no longer able to distinguish between what is real and what is illusion. When conjuring up images of this precise phenomenon, no name rings louder than that of James Jesus Angleton, who himself was enveloped and ultimately destroyed by his obsession with uncovering a "mole" within the CIA.
Martin's brief account of the CIA's largely unsuccessful efforts to spy on the Soviet Union during the Cold War alternates between the stories of "Jim" Angleton and "Bill" Harvey, two CIA trailblazers who undoubtedly left their marks in their profession. What's unfortunate is that while they may have scored some early successes, they spent the latter parts of their careers in shambles, with both resigning under hostile circumstances. Especially in Angleton's case, it is tough to objectively determine whether he did more good than bad.
For a more detailed account of the CI fiasco involving Angleton, Golitsin, and Nosenko, check out David Wise's "Molehunt."
Help! The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum!!!.......2005-08-16
This book, which relates the ongoing war between the CIA and the KGB, focuses on the activities of William K. Harvey, a gun-totin' ex-FBI agent (who does not seem to have entirely evolved in a social sense), and James Jesus Angleton, a Yale graduate who lived first in Italy and then in England, where he learned the fine arts of counter-espionage at the knees, as it were, of Kim Philby, and was in charge of counter-espionage at the CIA. The revelation that the latter was a KGB penetration agent in British Intelligence seems to have engendered extreme paranoia in the former, who was ever after on the lookout for moles in the Agency (and was even suspected by some of his colleagues of being one himself).
The tales of covert operations range from the amusing (an agent loitering in a park to make a dead-letter drop being arrested as a potential child molester) to the appalling (the dastardly enticement of the Soviet defector Yuri Nosenko with promises of a salaried job and then keeping him in what was tantamount to a cage for 1277 days (292 of which were devoted to interrogation) [p, 171], all because of the dubious word of Anatoli Golitsin, a previous defector--living high off the hog at taxpayer expense--who warned that the next defector would be a KGB plant.). Angleton placed his faith unstintingly in Golitsin, whose wild scenarios had Averell Harriman, a former United States ambassador to the Soviet Union, cast as a KGB agent. It never seems to have occurred to Angleton that Golitsin may have been the KGB plant, intent on making mischief.
The title, "Wilderness of Mirrors," was apparently coined by Angleton, who was a poet in his spare time. It refers to the labyrinthine world of espionage into which one is "lured deeper and deeper ... pursuing the traces of Soviet plots, both real and imagined, each step taking [one] farther into a bewildering world of intrigue ... [p. 10].
The author notes the justification of the battle between the CIA and the KGB, but he also cites the absurdity of its reality. "The careers of Angleton and Harvey were mired in absurdities, not the least of which was that they habitually violated the democratic freedoms they were sworn to defend . . . Immersed in duplicity and insulated by secrecy, they developed survival mechanisms and behavior patterns that by any rational standard were bizarre. The forced inbreeding of secrecy spawned mutant deeds and thoughts. Loyalty demanded dishonesty, and duty was a thieves' game. The game attracted strange men and slowly twisted them until something snapped. There were no winners or losers in this game, only victims" [p. 226].
Anti-Angleton.......2004-01-06
This is one of the anti-Angleton books. You you want to understand Angelton's approach to counter-intelligence, I would recommend Edward Jay Epstein's "Deception" instead.
Product Description
used
Customer Reviews:
HORRIBLE!!!!.......2007-09-13
I hated this book. Needed it for a "multicultural awareness in education" class. It was boring, hard to follow, difficult to understand and written in some sort of "language" that only Einstein could comprehend.
Very Biased and Very Good.......2007-07-01
If one were to write a history of any nation exclusively from the perspective of minority groups would it be a fair, complete and accurate portrait of that nation's story, character and culture? Probably not, but nonetheless you would have a penetrating look inside the world view of those who may get overlooked in the panoramic style of many history books. This is what you walk away with from Ronald Takaki's wonderful book `A Different Mirror'.
The book is somewhat dated considering many newly published American history books include the tales of blacks, women, Indians, Jews and even gays but `A Different Mirror' remains valuable because Takaki provides nuggets of information about the contributions of particular groups that aren't well know but are important and deserve acknowledgement.
A downside to this book, and it's serious, is that with the use of Shakespearean and other literary references, Takaki weaves a common thread of victimhood among all groups, suggesting that American society is nothing close to what it claims to be in the preamble of the Constitution. No society is perfect and though groups in America may have been exploited, America does not hold a monopoly on exploitation. Yet millions of minorities continue to rush into this nation for its distinct qualities that are rare and non-existent in other parts of the world. It would have enhanced Takaki's goal, which was to tell the stories of minority groups, if he didn't overlook the positive factors that compelled many to select this country.
If you want an introduction into American history this shouldn't be the only book you read, but `A Different Mirror' is enjoyable and highly recommended for anyone who wants to get a fuller picture of the American story.
Finally some truth in American history.......2007-05-25
This book was used in one of my undergrad courses and I was thrilled to have a book that filled in the blanks and expanded on the crap textbook makers such as McGraw Hill, et.al. publish to public school students. Our history, American history is watered-down and skewed in the textbooks. Thanks you Mr. Takaki for bringing truth to American history. This book made me want to explore different cultures more. To have learned that the Irish worked alongside Blacks in building railroads and in shipyards without major issues was mind-opening; to learn that the some of the first Blacks that were here in the U.S were indentured servants and not merely slaves was flooring; to learn that Native American tribes number more than Cherokee, Choctaw, Mohican, Seminole and Crow is fascinating and learning that stereotypes date long before Long John Silver. This book told me what I wanted to know and my junior high and high school history teachers couldn't. This book is becoming a part of my library (personal and professional).
A GREAT HISTORY LESSON HERE.......2007-01-25
This book was excellent, well-written, thoroughly research, and Mr. Takaki really goes into depth about the subject. You can learn a lot of historical facts about different ethnic groups. Mr. Takaki tells some unforgettable stories, and voices from different ethnic groups some happy some sad but this is such a great book that teachers should use this in their high school and college history classes. Full of history. He offers a fresh perspective and eyewitness accounts of our nations past. A RE-VISIONING.
Good Book.......2006-11-10
This book I am reading for one of my diversity classes. It is very informative
Customer Reviews:
Must have for art historians!.......2007-09-28
Art historian and art history student must hav. The book contains fabulous images and amazing insight into the period in which the images were created.
PERFECT! .......2007-03-09
THIS BOOK ARRIVED WITH PERFECT TIMING AND CONDITION!
I WAS VERY PLEASED!
Good introduction.......2006-11-04
Overall, this is a good introduction to Northern Renaissance art and the cultural mindset that produced it.
Like many works of revisionist history, this book is a bit heavy-handed at times in its effort to prove that Northern art is as worthy of study as Italian Renaissance art. But overall, the contrast between the two different artistic traditions is effective.
An exciting survey.......2001-07-18
I've loved the art of this period for years, but had little academic grounding in it. This book lets me return to old favorites with new eyes.
This, in common with other volumes in the "Perspectives" series, offers high quality (though small) reproductions of important works, up-to-date analysis and discussion of the art and the contexts in which it was created. Harbison's tone is informative, if ocasionally a little too sententious. But it's a very small price to pay, given the overall excellence of his work in this volume. It's obvious that Harbison loves this period, and he transmits his excitement for these works to the reader in concise language that is accessible to a lay audience.
Of particular interest is the discussion of how the Northern Rennaisance related to and differed from what was going on in Italy at the time. The only major weakness: not enough of a focus on Durer. But it's hard to get sufficient focus on any artist in a book this condensed.
An excellent book for those familiar with the period, or those wanting to get acquainted with a school of art often unjustly overshadowed by its southern contemporary.
Art of the Northern Renaissance in historical context.......2001-01-31
Informative, smart and well-written, Craig Harbison's "The Mirror of the Artist" provides an excellent, brief introduction to the sensibility, historical context, and practice of art in the North. From the attitude toward realism, to patronage among the growing class of government bureaucrats, to the market for art or the influence of the Reformation, the book offers an enhanced understanding of artistic interest and social situations in which the paintings were made -- without ever forgetting their aesthetic dimension. The best tribute I can offer is that I immediately went back to Amazon to order Harbison's "Jan Van Eyck: The Play of Realism", a $35 large format paperback. Minor quibble: Although well-illustrated for a paperback this size, with the book just about 6.25" x 9.5", more details should have been illustrated when details were discussed in larger works. (I'm still looking for the barely visible figure of the devil above the cow in the "Portinari Altarpiece".) But this is a rare problem.
Average customer rating:
- The story......and then the story about the story
- Playing a Life Playing a Role
- Comentary on Understanding and Racism
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Fires in the Mirror
Anna Deavere Smith
Manufacturer: Anchor
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0385470142
Release Date: 1993-09-01 |
Book Description
Derived from interviews with a wide range of people who experienced or observed New York's 1991 Crown Heights racial riots, Fires In The Mirror is as distinguished a work of commentary on current Black-White tensions as it is a work of drama.
Customer Reviews:
The story......and then the story about the story.......2006-03-22
The play captures the human drama from the highly charged, out-of-control situation in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, over three days of rioting in August of 1991. One of the play's many apoplectic characters says, "There ain't no justice," in response to another character describing separate groups of angry mourners for both Gavin Cato and Yankel Rosenbaum, with each group regarded as being "at a political rally rather than a funeral."
Another character talks of "the situation that moved from simplicity to sophistication...to become a powder keg." It is fascinating to hear and watch as each character reflected that powder keg experience uniquely. The play revealed that each one of us is, in fact, the accumulation of our life's experiences, at any given moment in time.
As the viewer watches the rumors spread, there is the realization that, "There always is the story. And then always there is the story about the story."
In a sense, Fires in the Mirror shows how one story is transformed and extended by the Crown Heights citizens into other stories, with each story being somewhat new, usually nuanced, and uniquely shaped by the circumstances surrounding the story-teller's accumulated life experiences. The accumulation is each individual's life. No other individual in the whole world can possibly have the exact same accumulation of experiences. That's a practical example of what diversity looks like.
In a certain sense, all involved are at fault in creating the riots. In quite another sense, the play makes clear that no one is at fault, because at any moment the community is prone to erupt into the confusion and violence that comes from individual bafflement and fear from an unexpected occurrence. In this case the occurrence is the auto crash leading to the murder that evening. The play says it is hard to assign blame. No one but no one wanted to have seven-year-old Cato killed in the auto accident. That evening, the teenagers didn't really want to kill Yankel in retaliation. Rather they were reacting, by automatically and unthinkingly expressing their anger and their oppressively inarticulate grief through knee-jerk violence.
Compelling--that one word describes the play's environmental aesthetic of eruption, noise, and confusion, all of which lead by the end to some clarity, yes, but also to stupefied and inexplicable human silence. That muted end result, the play shows, comes from a lack of absolute certainty regarding something important yet ultimately mysterious.
There is a great deal to be said for undertaking an exploration of the meaning in the moral ambiguity and confusion prevailing within the conflicted Brooklyn neighborhood, the confusion initiated by the two understandable, if terrible, deaths. In this instance, one might ask this: If we are not to assign blame, then what is the human alternative in these particular circumstances of murder leading to the madness of mass mayhem.
Prehaps after all it is forgiveness.
As the audience listens to each interpretation of the unfolding story--of what next happened and why--viewers comes to see that each point of view has some validity. There is never merely two sides to a story, that proverbial and simplistic black and white dichotomy. Humans are too complex for easy categorization into a "this" or a "that" camp or an "us vs. them" position. In truth there are often 10 or 15 sides to a story...at least.
The basis of each character's expressed perspective seems to derive from each character's absolute, even dogmatic, belief in the virtue and rightness of his or her own special position. And that "to-the-death" view necessarily derives from each character's accumulated life experiences in these our troubled and conflicted times of racial and religious tension. In a limited sense, that's a kind of certainty in a very uncertain world. It's the sort of certainty that comes from an individual's unquestioned belief in lived experience. But in a clearly profound way, the play asks the viewer to expand the cultural and social understandings of "lived experience" and what might result from external expressions of that lived experience.
Yet it is true that no virtuous act is as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our own standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of acceptance and love, which is forgiveness.
For me, the play brings into dramatic relief that idea of forgiveness as one humane way--whether in Crown Heights and elsewhere--of dealing with cynicism and despair. Those two attitudes of hopelessness seem automatically sometimes to snap into being from the confusion of unresolved social and moral ambiguity.
Forgiveness is one answer to the mess. Genuine forgiveness is one expression that can help relieve seemingly irreconcilable tension and conflict. Forgiveness is usually tough--that much we reasonably know. Forgiveness demands courage, heart.
Jim Boushay Metro Chicago Resources Unlimited Foundation
Playing a Life Playing a Role.......2001-05-18
In Fires in the Mirror, Anna Deavere Smith says, "A character from a play does not have a visible identity until the actor creates a body for that character." She goes on to explain that her goal is "to show that no one acts like anyone else." She does this by focusing on the details of her characters, the physical and liguistic subtleties that make people unique. This issue of "personality" of character is strongly emphasized in her work. When interviewing, she doesn't simply record the dialogue of her characters; she analyzes her characters, seeking to discover the true identity or identities of the people she portrays. What she discovers--and shares with us--is that her characters are not only three dimensional, but three dimensional in a multiplicity of roles. When she's successful, as she is in portraying the Jews and Blacks of Crown Heights in 1991, the underlying racial conflicts and hatreds and biases of her many-masked characters rise to the surface. This is Anna Deavere Smith's craft: She doesn't play a role. She plays a life playing a role.
Comentary on Understanding and Racism.......1998-05-01
Having lived in Brooklyn during the riots as well as the afterward subsequent search for meaning among those immediately involved, I find Smith's work to be exceptional. She does not go to academics or political pundits for explanation, but into the heart of the Crown Heights community itself. There she finds and then portrays complete understanding of cultural differences, allowing explanation to come from the source. One has only to read Smith's work here to see that we as human beings could do alot to combat racism if only we would ask questions and seek understanding first, rather than make assumptions and insist on our own meaning.
Book Description
By the end of the 15th century, the remains of the ancient gods littered the landscape of Western Europe. Christianity had erased the religions of ancient Greece and Rome and most Europeans believed the destruction of classical art was God's judgment on the pagan deities. How, then, did European artists during the next three centuries create such monumental works as Botticelli's The Birth of Venus and Raphael's Parnassus? In The Mirror of the Gods, Malcolm Bull tells the revolutionary story of how the great artists of Western Europe--from Botticelli and Leonardo to Titian and Rubens--revived the gods of ancient Greece and Rome. Each chapter focuses on a different deity and sheds dazzling new light on such familiar figures as Venus, Hercules, and Bacchus. Bull draws on hundreds of illustrations to illuminate the ancient myths through the eyes of Renaissance and Baroque artists, not as they appear in classical literature. When the wealthy and powerful princes of Christian Europe began to identify with the pagan gods, myth became the artist's medium for telling the story of his own time. The Mirror of the Gods is the fascinating and extraordinary story of how Renaissance artists combined mythological imagery and artistic virtuosity to change the course of western art. The Mirror of the Gods profoundly deepens our understanding of some of the greatest and most subversive artwork in European history. This delightfully told, lavishly illustrated, and extraordinary book amply rewards our ongoing fascination with classical myth and Renaissance art.
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