O'Donnell + Tuomey: Selected Works

Book Description

In todayâ€™s Ireland, itâ€™s not only the economy thatâ€™s booming. Dublin-based architects Oâ€™Donnell + Tuomey have brought a wealth of exciting buildings to the Emerald Isle for the past 17 years. Their striking modernist works show their appreciation for Irelandâ€™s rich cultural, historic, and civic identity without falling into the trap of typical pitched roofs, gables, slate, and brick. Instead the firm chooses less conventional but more fitting materials that seem to express something not quite visible about their sites.

Oâ€™Donnell + Tuomey, the first monograph on the firm, presents fifteen of their institutional and residential projects in an arresting collection of color photography, plans, and drawings. The book includes the controversial Irish Pavilion at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Ranelagh Multidenominational School, the Irish Pavilion at the 2004 Venice Biennale, and their recent Glucksman Gallery at the University College Cork, which was one of six buildings shortlisted for the 2005 Stirling Prize.

Average customer rating:

Beautiful

Majorca: The Art of Living
Solvi dos Santos , and Lanning Aldrich
Manufacturer: Stewart Tabori & Chang
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

Spain | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

Decorating | Interior Design | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

Decoration & Ornament | Interior Design | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

General | Interior Design | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

Style | Interior Design | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

General | Europe | Travel | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Provence: The Art of Living

ASIN: 1556708475

Amazon.com

Centuries of occupation by the Romans, Moors, Christians, and Greeks--and the influences of both Africa and Europe--have touched the architecture and spirit of the magnificent Balearic Islands, making them a place of curious contrasts. The 1800s and beyond saw a steady stream of well-to-do European bourgeoisie purchase homes and holiday retreats on these tranquil islands, places that today's modern travelers rarely experience beyond a glimpse from a tour bus or a morning walk. Thankfully, Majorca: The Art of Living opens up the gates of 30 of these beautiful homes, sharing with us the remarkable gardens, living rooms, verandas, and general lifestyles of some current residents of not only Majorca, but also Ibiza, Menorca, and Formentera.

A collaboration between respected photographer Sølvi Dos Santos and local writer Lanning Aldrich, the candid shots and fascinating interviews with homeowners astutely capture the very unique personalities of each of these 30 homes. Here is a monastic-style building with 30-foot walls built around a peaceful courtyard. In a whitewashed bedroom, serene shafts of natural life pour in through a strip of clerestory windows; a simple wooden table and six chairs overlook a grove of olive trees and a modest rectangular swimming pool. In contrast to this uncomplicated home is the regal splendor of a house belonging to descendants of the Marques de Vivot (a well-known aristocratic family). Grand is the operative word here--Flemish tapestries hang from walls, Italian paintings decorate every room, an enormous oak library is filled with the books of 10 generations. From the grandiose to the simple, from gothic to modern, from decidedly Spanish to definitively African, this exquisite book inspires thoughts of travel and better living. --Naomi Gesinger

Customer Reviews:

Beautiful.......2000-10-25

Packed with gorgeous photographs. Great design inspiration. Mostly interiors and "patio" settings of current homes, many overlooking hills. Not a historical record, this book features contemporary homes, many with mediterranean and modern design influences mixed with the Majorcan architecture and palette.

The Fields of Athenry: A Journey Through Irish History

Average customer rating:

I Enjoyed This Book Immensely!
A third rate history by a second rate snob
Entertaining work of Personal and Irish History
The Fields of Athenry
Ireland, and a journey

The Fields of Athenry: A Journey Through Irish History
James Charles Roy
Manufacturer: Westview Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Historic Preservation | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

Irish | Ethnic & National | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Early Civilization | Ancient | History | Subjects | Books

General | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

Social History | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books

The Back of Beyond: A Search for the Soul of Ireland
The Road Wet the Wind Close: Celtic Ireland

ASIN: 0813338603

Customer Reviews:

I Enjoyed This Book Immensely!.......2002-09-19

I appreciate James Roy's style of writing in which the past is so cleanly entwined with the present. This book takes the reader on a short journey through Ireland's tumultuous history and brings it all to life in the lives and characters of the real people of Galway. I was looking for a book that would not gloss over Ireland like a tourist guide and I found one in The Fields of Athenry. I am looking forward to reading Mr. Roy's other works! Now if I could just come up with enough money to buy me a castle... :-)

A third rate history by a second rate snob.......2002-08-06

I fail to see why the author bothered with his project- be it the "castle" or the book- given his low regard for the people and the place in general. I'd spent a fair amount of time in the area while growing up, and can tell you that the area has a charm that was utterly lost on the author. Don't waste your money, there are a myriad of books vastly superior to this one to be had. Just pick one at random and you'd have a better than even chance of it.

Entertaining work of Personal and Irish History.......2002-05-15

Mr. Roy's work is really two books in one -- a history of Ireland and its relationship with its Englsih invaders, and the personal story of how he bought a castle and restored it. Mr. Roy weaves the two stories together in alternating chapters, and does so with great skill.

The Irish history is sound, concise, and informative -- Mr. Roy explains how the Norman invaders became co-opted by their Irish subjects and how running through the whole complicated skein of Irish history is the story of the great, but quarrelsome Irish families -- The O'Connors, O'Briens, Burkes, and Fitzgeralds. This focus provides a great deal of clarity to understanding the history of the Island.

The story of Moyode Castle (Roy's personal story)is also fascinating, especially in detailing how the Irish accept this "foreigner" among them and how Mr. Roy comes to know and appreciate the local Irish culture. The book has many amusing tales of his encounters, although it is a little wistful, because he realizes that the Ireland he celebrates is gradually being lost to history.

Well worth reading, particularly if you are looking to travel in rural Ireland, or ever hoped to buy a castle.

The Fields of Athenry.......2002-03-26

This author has an extrodinary talent, though he say's he's not Irish, to weave a tale of some of the most telling lore of Irish history with his ambitious effort (and the amusing stories that go with it)of restoring an ancient Castle in a town seemingly forgotten by history. All of Irelands real charactors of history are here and Mr. Roy does an excellent job of bringing them to our midst again, sometimes no matter how tragic or enlightening that may be. An excellent read from a very studied author.

Ireland, and a journey.......2001-03-28

I really enjoyed Mr.Roy's account of his travels and travails in Ireland. He is a gifted writer, the flow of thoughts coupled with his good humor was irresistable. Opportunity to get in some history painlessley makes the book very rare! Good read!

Art and the National Dream: The Search for Vernacular Expression in Turn-Of-The-Century Design (Art & Architecture)

Average customer rating:

Art and the National Dream: The Search for Vernacular Expression in Turn-Of-The-Century Design (Art & Architecture)

Manufacturer: Irish Academic Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

Reference | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

General | Reference | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Instructional & How-To | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Decorative Arts | Design & Decorative Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Japan | Asia | History | Subjects | Books

Finland | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

Hungary | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

Norway | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

Poland | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

Russia | History | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0716524910

A World of Fine Difference: The Social Architecture of a Modern Irish Village

Average customer rating:

Unique anthropological study of coastal Irish village

A World of Fine Difference: The Social Architecture of a Modern Irish Village
Adrian Peace
Manufacturer: University College Dublin Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Nonfiction | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
ASIN: 1900621592

Customer Reviews:

Unique anthropological study of coastal Irish village.......2002-01-22

A World of Fine Difference has been written by an anthropologist who has somehow managed to combine the discipline of his profession with the role of community member, always aware that he is a blow-in and therefore not a true member of the community because he does not possess the necessary local knowledge that would give him the cultural capital he needs to share the sense of place, identity and belonging of the native-born. This may seem an irrelevant point, but it is not. Until you understand why place, identity and belonging are so important to Irish people you will never be able to understand the Irish psyche.
Peace calls his study village Inveresk - "the inlet of the fish". It is a fictional name, as are all the names of the people and some of the other places in the book. It does not matter that Peace cannot identify the actual village, because the social patterns he describes resonate through much of Irish life, rural and urban. Given what he has explained about diversity, Peace is at pains to stress that his study community is unique - hence his "world of fine difference". The members of Inveresk also see themselves as "a different place altogether" from neighbouring communities, which in turn see Inveresk as "a place full of really queer people". But Inveresk is not one community, it is three closely-knit, diverse communities; Peace describes them as country, village and pier. Where Inveresk may differ from other similar coastal fishing and farming communities is that each lives cheek by jowl, with the country folk no further than a few miles removed from the pier folk.
In Inveresk, Peace shows a community that has no desire to live up to the caricature that rural Ireland is dying or losing its cultural identity to modernity. He writes: "Despite the extent of this sustained induction into modernity, Inveresk retains a strong, indeed pervasive, sense of its own distinct identity, of being a special place in the world. Notwithstanding the many external forces which threaten to breach and subvert it, this sense of distinction is articulated with pride and the residents work hard to sustain it." So this is a book about a "special" community in rural Ireland, a community that is determined not to lose its distinctiveness, despite the external forces ranged against it, and ready to subvert the very forces that would destroy it for their own ends.
Peace argues that the unique community factors which make Inveresk a "special" place may save it from the fate befalling other similar coastal communities. There is, Peace contends, evidence that "recent technological, economic and political developments have encouraged rather than eroded the expression of cultural" diversity, hybridity and creolisation, even if the people of Inveresk themselves are not convinced of this. More significant, Peace argues, is the reality that this small community of 450 adults is aware of possible entrophication, so much that there is a deliberate and conscientious desire to keep "alive the sense of belonging to this particular place at this particular time". In this regard, Inveresk's strength is the "fierce spirit of egalitarianism" and "almost remorseless opposition to political hierarchy". In modern Ireland, with few exceptions (Arainn being one), that is not only unique but amazing.
In Peace's words Inveresk is "a modern place in a late modern society" yet sadly perhaps "also a distinctively peripheral locale in which, one presumes, the negative effects of global marginalisation should be especially pronounced". There is little argument that "the inhabitants of Inveresk share a sense of powerlessness in relation to the politics of government concentrated in the metropolitan core". However that has not stopped this small community of 450 adults from consciously and deliberately attempting to reshape their own small world from within their local environs while keeping an eye on what is going on beyond. As Peace notes: "They may not be successful in some of these efforts; a few may have no impact at all, but that is beside the point. Far from their locality 'moving away from their feet', they remain firmly in command of it and they are proudly aware of the fact."

20Th-Century Architecture Ireland (Architecture)

Average customer rating:

20Th-Century Architecture Ireland (Architecture)

Manufacturer: Prestel
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

Reference | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

General | Museums & Collections | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Home Design | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 3791317199

How Russia Shaped the Modern World: From Art to Anti-Semitism, Ballet to Bolshevism

Average customer rating:

Interesting Read...Many Inaccuracies
Straddling the Continents
A compelling new look at Russia's impact on the modern world
Bland, but tendentious
Russia: The old Myth that never ends...

How Russia Shaped the Modern World: From Art to Anti-Semitism, Ballet to Bolshevism
Steven G. Marks
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

Japan | Asia | History | Subjects | Books

Russia | History | Subjects | Books

20th Century | World | History | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Arts & Photography | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Professional | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia
The Cambridge Companion to Modern Russian Culture (Cambridge Companions to Culture)
The Russian Experiment in Art, 1863-1922 (World of Art)
Resurrection
From Russia to USSR and Beyond

ASIN: 0691118450

Book Description

In this sweeping history, Steven Marks tells the fascinating story of how Russian figures, ideas, and movements changed our world in dramatic but often unattributed ways.

On Europe's periphery, Russia was an early modernizing nation whose troubles stimulated intellectuals to develop radical and utopian alternatives to Western models of modernity. These provocative ideas gave rise to cultural and political innovations that were exported and adopted worldwide. Wherever there was discontent with modern existence or traditional societies were undergoing transformation, anti-Western sentiments arose. Many people perceived the Russian soul as the antithesis of the capitalist, imperialist West and turned to Russian ideas for inspiration and even salvation.

Steven Marks shows that in this turbulent atmosphere of the past century and a half, Russia's lines of influence were many and reached far. Russia gave the world new ways of writing novels. It launched cutting-edge trends in ballet, theater, and art that revolutionized contemporary cultural life. The Russian anarchist movement benignly shaped the rise of vegetarianism and environmentalism while also giving birth to the violent methods of modern terrorist organizations. Tolstoy's visions of nonviolent resistance inspired Gandhi and the U.S. Civil Rights movement at the same time that Russian anti-Semitic conspiracy theories intoxicated right-wing extremists the world over. And dictators from Mussolini and Hitler to Mao and Saddam Hussein learned from the experiments of the Soviet regime.

Moving gracefully from Moscow and St. Petersburg to Beijing and Berlin, London and Luanda, Mexico and Mississippi, Marks takes us on an intellectual tour of the Russian exports that shaped the twentieth century. The result is a richly textured and stunningly original account of the extent to which Russia--as an idea and a producer of ideas--has contributed to the making of the modern world. Placing Russia in its global context, the book betters our understanding of the anti-Western strivings that have been such a prominent feature of recent history.

Customer Reviews:

Interesting Read...Many Inaccuracies.......2004-07-23

Marks makes a number of technical inaccuracies. If you want to see if you're interested in Russian culture but don't know much about it, get this book from the library. Personally, I was inspired to learn more about anarchy and anti-semitism from this book. You won't need it again, and you shouldn't cite this book as a source, because Marks is mostly using secondary sources, which you'll need to read yourself. The general ideas that you get from this book will probably be fine, but if you want to follow up on some of the ideas, find a book that's more focused on the area in which you're interested. Additionally, Marks makes a number of unsubstantiated generalizations that he doesn't back up; this would be fine if the book weren't meant for beginners, who won't understand where he's coming from.

Straddling the Continents.......2004-04-17

I purchased, "How Russia Shaped the Modern World" at the New York Public Library's stunning exhibit on "Russia Engages the World." The show covered Russia primarily in the 17th and 18th century so I thought I'd take a leap forward and read this book.

"Russia" covers a lot of ground including subjects ranging from anarchism to painting and shows the impact of Russian ideas on authors in the United States as well as dictators in Africa. Frequently, I found myself wanting more from a discussion about an artist or a movement but the purpose of the book is to chart influences and make connections not to detail specific movements and individuals. Russia is unique in that it brings together both European and Asian influences commingling the foreign with the familiar that is so intriguing to cultures around the world.

I found the book most compelling when it looked at Russian literature, dance and painting. There are several reasons for this. First, the arts are full of hope, originality, vision and joy. Second, the story of how Russian artists influenced the rest of the world is unfamiliar to me. Third, Russia's political influence has been largely harsh, destructive, sad and all too familiar to someone who lived through the cold war.

The prose style is more analytic than descriptive and incisive but not personal. I think it fits the subject matter but borders on the dry side. My biggest complaint is that the book could have been divided into two sections, one that focused on the Russian artistic contributions and the other on the political. The impact of each of those areas is different and would have benefited from separate but rigorous analysis.

A compelling new look at Russia's impact on the modern world.......2003-08-08

How Russia Shaped the Modern World is a significant work of historical research and synthesis which will have a major impact not only on the field of Soviet history but on how historians understand the cultural history of the 20th century as a whole. Marks' project examines the multifarious influences Russia and the Soviet Union have had on the political, cultural, and artistic development of the world. The scope of the work is very broad, yet his research on every aspect of the topic is painstakingly careful and thorough, drawing on primary and secondary sources in Russian, German, French, Dutch, and English.

Marks is skillful at tracing subtle intellectual influences and elusive cultural connections; in the process, he illuminates the broad, transnational frames of reference within which many of this century's most important ideological and artistic movements developed. His explorations of topics such as the links among Tolstoy, Gandhi, and the American civil rights movement, the impact of Dostoevsky on the modernist movement, and the connections among Kropotkin, the British arts and crafts movement, and the development of modern suburbia, generate powerful new insights that separate monographs on each of these topics could never produce. Marks' treatment of European and global popular reception of Russian thinkers and his analysis of how the interpretation and misinterpretation of their works contributed to the shaping of contemporary cultural history, stands out as an example of the originality and importance of his work.

What is perhaps most impressive about the book is the intellectual cohesion that informs the author's treatment of this wide range of topics. What emerges from his work is a picture of a Russia whose tremendous impact on global development during this past century was derived precisely from its own highly ambivalent response to the Western model of modernization. Both in rejecting the socio-cultural paradigm of modernity and in embracing it, Russia and the Soviet Union developed distinctive modes of expression and methods of political organization that became paradigmatic examples in their own right, both in the West and in the non-European world. This approach places the history of communism in a much broader frame of understanding and provides a vital analytical tool for an overarching analysis of contemporary cultural history. It constitutes one of those original insights that have the power to change the way we view the past. Moreover, it represents a significant contribution to the methodology of cultural history: Marks illuminates how the transmission and appropriation of ideas can cut across political and ideological boundaries, while at the same time exploring how the development of transnational cultural influences was shaped by particular political institutions, power differentials, and socio-economic conditions.

In brief, this book offers a compelling new perspective on Russia's role in shaping global culture and politics in the modern era. It is highly recommended to anyone with an interest in modern Russian history, the globalization of culture in the 20th century, and/or the relationship between economic and technological modernization and the upsurge of radical politics in the contemporary world.

Bland, but tendentious.......2003-08-01

Great histories often leave readers asking new questions. But the only question one asks on reading this book is why Princeton University Press bothered to publish it. The thesis of Marks' book is a simple one. The modern world has been seriously influenced by such Russian phenomenon as the contrasting anarchisms of Bakunin and Kropotkin, the novels of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Russian Ballet and Russian Modern Art, and the cursed progeny of Russian Anti-Semitism and Soviet Communism. You don't say. It strikes me as a truism that any large and important country would have at some point in its long history have a major impact on the rest of the world.

As it happens, Marks's book is even less impressive than that summary suggests. Consider the question of influence. Would the same thing have happened had Russian never existed? Marks' first chapter deals with the problem of anarchism. He argues that Bakunin and the vile, sinister Nechayev were the prototypes of the modern terrorist. There is some truth to this. But let us consider that Proudhon, not Bakunin, was more the father of anarchism. Or that conspiratorial cliques owe their existence to Babeuf, Blanqui and the Carbonnari. Or that the importance of the Fenians, who assassinated a Canadian cabinet minister before Bakunin even met Nechayev. Or that the Ku Klux Klan committed far worse terrorist outrages than all the anarchist groups put together. Likewise would the rise of jazz in Europe really have been delayed if, as Marks suggests, the example of Diaghilev and his "primitive" ballet had not been there to encourage things? Can one really say that Mumford's municipal planning or the ecological movement would not exist were it not for Kropotkin? Tolstoy did not invent pacifism, so do we really have to read a potted history of Gandhi and the civil rights movement?

A second problem is the book's deep mediocrity. Marks is not an interesting writer. He shows no great critical skills, has looked at no new original sources, and makes no profound claims. The chapter on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is not really an improvement on Norman Cohn's three and a half decade old classic. Although he is writing about two of the greatest novelists who ever lived he quotes next to nothing from Tolstoy or Dostoevsky that is interesting, witty or profound. What we do have is a long list of people who admired these two writers, something we really didn't need to prove. Moreover what he does write is infected with cliché: "Dostoevsky's fiction encapsulates the convulsive dynamism and instability of his own life and the rapidly changing world he lived in." ""The heroes of Dostoevsky's writings scream out in the torment of urban life..." He writes of Dostoevsky's Orthodoxy so much as an "Eastern" religion one might think it had more in common with Hinduism than Protestantism. And Joyce's "Ulysses" does NOT "urge submission to a God-ordered world..."

The third and most important problem is Marks' theoretical framework. For Marks is not simply portraying any kind of Russian influence. He is arguing that Russians are the carriers, like bacteria, of anti-modernizing impulses. This thesis relies on the whole "modernization" paradigm of the sixties and seventies which saw an unproblematic relationship between the rise of capitalism, liberalism, democracy, industrialism and Anglo-American dominance, and insinuated that any opposition to this could be dismissed as primitive and irrational. This paradigm has been thoroughly attacked by hordes of scholars such as Eley, Blackbourn, Sperber, Berenson, Segalen, Lih, Rosenberg, Shanin, Lears, Scott, and many, many others. It unproblematically assumes that Russia, both before and after 1917, can be described as simply unmodern and unEuropean. There is no problem for Marks that Tolstoy supposedly inspires both pacifists and Nazi psychopaths, because there is not that much difference between left and right. So we get statements such that both Dostoevsky and the revolutionaries both disliked cities, or that Tolstoy was opposed to parliamentary democracy, non-existent in the Russia of his lifetime and not much evident elsewhere on the continent. Having noticed that Henry Ford was the leading American anti-semite, Marks argues that he was really antimodern. He also says Mussolini and Hitler were "anticapitalist" on the basis of little evidence. The last pages on Communism and the Third World are especially shallow, with Communism the basis for dictators as different as Attaruk and Mobutu. Communism is blamed for almost everything that has done wrong with the Third World since independence. This is based on statements such as his claim that with the exception of the Indian/Pakistan wars, "every major war between Third World protagonist before the 1990s was started by a state armed by the Soviet Union." Leaving aside that most third world wars were and are civil wars, this is patently untrue, since Israel clearly started the 1956 and 1982 wars, and the 1967 war as well. And what about the Falklands war, the attacks on East Timor and the Spanish Sahara, or Zairean/South African intervention that started the Angolan Civil war, or the way the United States was responsible for both the Vietnam War and the widening of the war to Laos and Cambodia? One is reminded in reading this of Orlando Figes' "Natasha's Dance." It was not that good a book, but at least it was more fun.

Russia: The old Myth that never ends..........2003-06-26

Professor Steven G. Marks' new book: "How Russia Shaped The Modern World" comes out at the time when Russia itself is deep into the sweeping transitions and uncertainties of the monumental post-Soviet collapse of the 1989-91.

Decoding specific Russian roots of various political and cultural movements transplanted elsewhere in the world, the book looks an appealing endeavor in trying to use a unifying approach in showing how this particular blend of Slavic philosophy, based on exaltation of human suffering and repudiation of satiety, went on shaking and reconstructing established human societal and creative conventions in Europe, Asia, Africa and, to a lesser extent, on both American continents.

Author deserves particular credit for elements of the book that deal with the Russian creative influence, still abound around the world today. Sergei Diaghilev in ballet, Leon Bakst in costume design, Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vsevolod Meyerhold in theatre, Vasily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich in painting and visual art are all interwoven neatly and convincingly into the paradigmatic influences in their respective and inventive artistic expressions.

Overwhelming amount of reference material and specific reading that went into writing these chapters, which appear to require very little extra in order to turn them into a separate and valuable book on continuity and history in arts, speaks volumes about S. Marks' commendable meticulousness in dealing with people and their ideas.

Continuous relevance of Mikhail Bakunin, the father of anti-bourgeoisie anarchism and radicalism with his passion for destruction, his penchant for secrecy and his willingness to use brutal force to establish new egalitarian order, linked naturally through multitude of revolts, revolutions and "liberation" movements of the XX Century could hardly be denied in the present "(new) terrorism age".

One of Fedor Dostoevsky's brilliant and infectious social admonitions, telling us, that "one (dictator) could rule (despotically), but as long as he took care of the submissive people's most basic survival needs, (and) mankind will run after (him) like a flock of sheep, grateful and obedient", expressed in Brothers Karamazov, persists in bordering on absolute, by the very lure such "economic certainty and psychological protection" brings, in return for our willingness to give up the burden of our personal freedom.

Steven Marks' particular allusion to this forewarning by Dostoevsky, although hidden deeply in the thick of his book, and the substance of this intuitive comment by the great Russian writer, has never been truer in our "liberating" times of neo-liberal governing agendas.

The book's topical chapters, dealing with such specific philosophical torrent as Tolstoy's "neprotivlenie zlu nasiliem" (non-resistance to evil by violence) and, separately, with domestic Russian/Soviet Communism and Dictatorship, including their "export" variations, found elsewhere in the world, are sprinkled with witty observations, and clever remarks, but, overall, are less enticing.
Probably because of the far-reaching nature of writings on philosophy of "peaceful" resistance, exemplified by Mahatma Gandhi or found in texts on the equality rights movement of the 1960s American blacks. And, in second case, because of even more exhaustive multitudes of the anti-Communist writings, that by now, easily form a separate branch of the Western Social Science.

Russia continues to defy conventions and many old and new questions are still waiting to be answered.

XXth Century had proven to be one of the most turbulent in the country's history as it went through two sweeping and devastating societal changes: first in violently replacing old Imperial and Czarist Russia with Socialist ideas and ideals, and forcibly uniting hundreds of the Russian and ethnic millions under its banner, and then, quietly expiring and disintegrating under the unsustainable economic and political burden of its own existence, just over 70 years later.

How could it happen that Russia, whose best intellectual minds felt closest in spirit to German philosophical currents, and drunk freely from Hegel, Marx and Engels, had fought two bloody wars with the Germany's military in a span of less then 30 years?

How, standing (secretly) ready to join the German-Italian fascists and the Japanese in the Axis triangle in 1940, Russia ended up on the victorious side of Western Allies and survived another four and a half decades of the cold war, while the seemingly more "viable" regimes ended in disaster of the 1945 defeat?

Finally, how is the USSR, which was labeled unequivocally and rightly to be a "totalitarian" state, has shown ability not only for the radical internal self-reformation, but more amazingly, the ability to annihilate peacefully in taking the volunteer path to extinction? Extinction that, to be sure, was catastrophic, but came to pass without gory destructions or civil war?

Book Description

â€œWittgenstein in Viennaâ€ documents Wittgensteinâ€™s life in the city: the places where he, his family and those with whom he was in contact lived, worked, entertained and were socialized. The book will be a source of enrichment to the cultural tourist in Vienna. Its authors are authorities on Wittgensteinâ€™s philosophy especially in relation to Viennese culture and popular culture, in particular to the world of the coffee house and cabaret.

Average customer rating:

Portraits of Joyce as a Young Dog

Joyce Images
Bob Cato , and Greg Vitiello
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

Irish | Ethnic & National | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Customer Reviews:

Portraits of Joyce as a Young Dog.......2000-06-05

OK, so I basically stole the title for this review from Dylan Thomas (another author to read!). At any rate, it seems this oversized book is out of print, although Amazon.com will try to find it for you. If they can't...

122 pages of fascinating photos, drawings, manuscript revisions, and quotes by Joyce; statues, drawings, photos, and even stamps of Joyce! The prints are excellent, and help you feel like you know the man (and family) just a little bit better. Originally published at $39.95 (a price for Joyce fans only, I think), its new low cost makes it an excellent purchase for all interested in literature and/or photography. I haven't seen the $72 "Images of Joyce," (sold at Amazon) but this well-designed book, showing Joyce at various ages and locations, is well worth looking for.

20Th-Century Architecture in Ireland
Average customer rating:
20Th-Century Architecture in Ireland

Manufacturer: Prestel Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
General | History & Periods | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
General | Ireland | Europe | History | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 3791317067

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books