Showing posts with label drm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drm. Show all posts

Charles Hodge: Guardian of American Orthodoxy Review

Charles Hodge: Guardian of American Orthodoxy
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Charles Hodge: Guardian of American Orthodoxy ReviewPaul C. Gutjahr has rendered a great service to American religious historians, theologians, and Christians alike in his biography of Charles Hodge. Hodge was a man of giant intellect, steadfast conviction, and diverse theological engagement. In his fifty years of teaching at Princeton Seminary he propagated and defended orthodox Calvinist beliefs from the liberalizing trends that shook the protestant world in the 19th century.

It took Gutjahr ten years to complete this book, and reading through it one understands why. As a professor at Princeton, Hodge engaged in numerous and varied theological battles involving imputation, revivalism, inspiration, German idealism, Transcendentalism, higher biblical criticism, Roman Catholicism, Darwinism, slavery, and more. The level of research Gutjahr put in to portray these subjects is impressive.

Though once called "the pope of Presbyterianism," Hodge is often forgotten or cursorily mentioned in surveys of American religious history. But Gutjahr convincingly shows that Hodge was an integral part of the American religious landscape in the 19th century, and his effect influenced the shape of fundamentalism in many significant ways. Historians of this era would be wise to make use of this fantastic survey of Charles Hodge, and readers will be treated to an impressive survery 19th century thought along the way. Gutjahr does a good job of fairly analyzing Hodge's life and writings in their historical context, and is equitable in his assessment of Hodge. Christians and non Christians alike will benefit by the study of this man.

The biography is not merely intellectual and readers get a good sense of Hodge's personal life. Gutjahr details his upbringing, family life, and moments of adversity, all of which do much to help us understand Hodge. Christian will find fertile ground for inspiration as well as many lessons to learn from Hodge's theological leadership and the results of his work. There are a couple things I thought could have been better, such as a greater input of Hodge's own writings and words in the biography, but they are only minor concerns compared with the gift Paul Gutjahr has given to historians, theologians, and Christians in his great biography.Charles Hodge: Guardian of American Orthodoxy OverviewCharles Hodge (1797-1878) was one of nineteenth-century America's leading theologians, owing in part to a lengthy teaching career, voluminous writings, and a faculty post at one of the nation's most influential schools, Princeton Theological Seminary. Surprisingly, the only biography of this towering figure was written by his son, just two years after his death. Paul Gutjahr's book, therefore, is the first modern critical biography of a man some have called the "Pope of Presbyterianism." Hodge's legacy is especially important to American Presbyterians. His brand of theological conservatism became vital in the 1920s, as Princeton Seminary saw itself, and its denomination, split. The conservative wing held unswervingly to the Old School tradition championed by Hodge, and ultimately founded the breakaway Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The views that Hodge developed, refined, and propagated helped shape many of the central traditions of twentieth- and twenty-first-century American evangelicalism. Hodge helped establish a profound reliance on the Bible among evangelicals, and he became one of the nation's most vocal proponents of biblical inerrancy. Gutjahr's study reveals the exceptional depth, breadth, and longevity of Hodge's theological influence and illuminates the varied and complex nature of conservative American Protestantism.

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Understanding the Times: New Testament Studies in the 21st Century: Essays in Honor of D. A. Carson on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday Review

Understanding the Times: New Testament Studies in the 21st Century: Essays in Honor of D. A. Carson on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday
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Understanding the Times: New Testament Studies in the 21st Century: Essays in Honor of D. A. Carson on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday ReviewBR: Understanding the Times edited by Andreas J. Kostenberger and Robert W. Yarbrough
I love to be encouraged; encourage others; and see others encouraged as well. In this collection of essays honoring D.A. Carson (on the occasion of his 65th birthday) I hope that he is encouraged by his Colleagues in honoring perhaps the premier evangelical New Testament scholar in this past generation. I am reminded of the author to the Hebrews words of encouragement to faithful workers like Carson, "For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do (Hebrews 6:10)." Thank you scholars for paying tribute to such a wonderful gift to the church - at 65 - I hope he lives many more fruitful years so as to continue disseminating outstanding Biblical Theology that benefits the Church and helps strengthen students of the Bible to make a difference in our culture for the glory of Christ.
This book is into three sections that cover the breadth of Carson's areas of expertise as a prolific writer and speaker:
Part 1: New Testament Studies and Ancillary Disciplines
1)Greek Linguistics and Lexicography by Stanley E. Porter
2)Hermeneutics and Theological Interpretation by Grant Osborne
3)The Church: A Summary and Reflection by Mark Dever
4)Evangelical Self-Identity and the Doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy by John D. Woodbridge
Part 2: Special Topics in New Testament Studies
5)Lifting up the Son of Man and God's Love for the World: John 3:16 in its Historical, Literary, and Theological Contexts by Andreas J. Kostenberger
6)Justification in Galatians by Douglas J. Moo
7)God as the Speaking: "Theology" in the Letter to the Hebrews by Peter T. O'Brien
8)The Language of Baptism: The Meaning of Baptizo in the New Testament by Eckhard J. Schnabel
Part 3: New Testament Studies around the World
9)New Testament Studies in Africa by Robert W. Yarbrough
10)New Testament Studies in North America by Craig L. Blomberg
11)New Testament Studies in Asia by David W. Pao
12)New Testament Studies in Europe by Robert W. Yarbrough
Appendix: D.A. Carson: His Life and Work to Date
Selected Writings of D.A. Carson
I think this is an excellent collection of essays. I enjoyed all the essays immensely - especially the ones in Part 2 and the Appendix written by Kostenberger. I particularly enjoyed the tribute as not only a testament to the great scholar that Carson is, but also to his integrity and character as a godly man who happens to have a great mind, but also a shepherd's heart for nurturing the flock for whom our loving Savior died. I think that any one who loves D.A. Carson's work will love him even more after reading this book. I am so grateful for his labors and pray that he is encouraged and others will be motivated to follow in his steps as he has followed in the steps of Christ.Understanding the Times: New Testament Studies in the 21st Century: Essays in Honor of D. A. Carson on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday Overview

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Makers of Modern India Review

Makers of Modern India
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Makers of Modern India ReviewThe diversity, originality, and volume of content written by our founding fathers is really heartening. The subject they wrote on were the teething concerns of their days, and touched upon all facets such as freedom, social justice, caste, gender, and India's standing /role in the world. Seems like a whole lot of original and revolutionary thinker-politicians came together in those days, and we have stopped producing the breed of original thinker-politicians.
Just the 4 great men- Jawaharlal Nehru, M.K. Gandhi, B.R. Ambedkar and Rabindranath Tagore have wrote close to 50, 000 volumes on diverse topics.
If only the petty contemporary politicians who claim to be followers of these great men & women had read the writings/speeches of these great people. When Guha introduces, he writes, "The tradition that this book has showcased is dead. No politician now alive can think or write in an original way or even interesting fashion about the direction Indian society and politics is or should be taking."
In this book, Ramachandra Guha has introduced and edited writing (and speeches) of 19 men and women, who he thinks were the makers of modern India. There are a few surprising additions, and a few omissions. Without delving into why there were a few added or deleted from this list, we can look at the heterogeneity of the their thoughts and their views on causes close to them.
The book shows the diversity and originality of thought, the "argumentative" or debating nature of these men/women, and a compendium of ideas on wide variety of subjects.
Guha has tried to tie the book together with his introduction and editions, but still this is a collection rather than one cohesive, flowing tome.
The book starts with Rammohun Roy- a modernist way ahead of his time, who wrote about freedom, social justice, and educational reforms and goes on to Syed Ahmed Khan- the founder of Aligarh Muslim university. Jotirao Phule talks about rural poverty and caste inequalities while Hamid Dalwai writes about the extremism in both Hindus and Muslims .
There are the radicals, the rightists, the leftists, the early capitalists, and the feminists.
It off course, covers the social and reforming ideas of Gandhi. Some speeches and writings by Ambedkar and Gandhi has been put across in a debating fashion making for a great read.
Makers of Modern India Overview

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A Dictionary of Asian Christianity Review

A Dictionary of Asian Christianity
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A Dictionary of Asian Christianity ReviewDAC is a welcome publication which will open new vistas for Asian and non-Asian readers.
Some 1260 articles cover the past story and present shape of Christianity from Pakistan east to the Pacific (with some material on west Asia in early centuries. A wide collection of contributors was assembled, with Asian writers supplying artiucles on areas of specifc interest as well as contributing, editorially, to the shape of the whole volume.
Articles cover significant features relating to Christianity as well as to its historical, political, econonomic, social and religious context. This scope makes DAC valuable beyond immediate interests of browsing or researching in the Christian story.
As might be expected in a first attempt at such a vast task, there are some problems. As a matter of definition,Protestant missionary societies, significant individual churches, theological colleges and other educational institutions are purposefully excluded. This produces some odd results - for example there is no separate article on the China Inland Mission (later to become OMF)which has been and remains, an important contributor to Protestant work in Asia. Some articles are of uneven quality - doubtless due to a paucity of sources and difficulty in finding contributors.
These are significant problems and affect the comprehesiveness and reliability of DAC. To some extent, they define the best use of this work as a tool for further reading and research rather than as a a normative standard.
Nevertheless, the significance of the publication and its value, should be noted. Put simply, there is nothing like it on the market and it opens up material that may otherwise remain hidden in local knowledge and lost over time.
DAC is a wonderful step in documenting the story of Asian Christianity and is a timely publication in what has been dubbed 'the Asian century'.A Dictionary of Asian Christianity Overview

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The Notebook Review

The Notebook
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The Notebook ReviewThis is very different from anything I have ever read before - something in between William Golding's "Lord of the Flies" and Elie Weisel's "Night". The savagery and cruelty is at such a level that sometimes it seems a little erotic. This is a very different view of the Nazi occupation and then Russian involvement in the East European countries. The story is about a twin and their grandmother surviving during second world war. They survive (actually they thrive) but had to bury their emotions and transform themselves into savages. They destroy their emotions and feeling systematically and clinically so that even traces of it cannot be found.
The whole book is narrated in first person plural and the author never mentions a single name to identify any person which is unique. The names does not mean anything nor does the relationship - all that matter is what one can get and survive. You can still see touches of humanity in these boys when they bring money and food to their friend Harelip but the amount of emotions involved in these relationship are extremely limited. The boys kill but are not troubled since to them it is one more act similar to gathering food and daily chores. I enjoyed reading it and hope you will also enjoy it since you do not come across this kind of book everyday. Translation by Alan Sheridan is also quite entertaining.The Notebook OverviewA nightmare fable of Central Europe during World War II. The notebook in question is the composition of two small twin boys evacuated to their greedy, illiterate, foul-tempered grandmother. All around them the strong - including the occupying army rounding up their human herd - prey on the weak.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (John Hope Franklin Center Book) Review

The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (John Hope Franklin Center Book)
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The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (John Hope Franklin Center Book) ReviewIn her wonderful new book, Diana Taylor, a distinguished professor of both Spanish and performance studies, brings her areas of expertise into "conversation." Performances, she argues, are vital "acts of transfer" that transmit social knowledge, memory and a sense of identity in Latin/o American (and by extension other) cultures.
She writes, "I am not suggesting that we merely extend our analytic practice to other `Non-Western' areas. Rather, what I propose here is a real engagement between two fields that helps us rethink both." By working from the points of disconnection between area and performance studies Taylor creates a new framework for approaching performance as embodied social practice.

Shifting focus to "the live" requires new methodologies and Taylor creates exciting new theoretical tools to further this discussion. Since, in her view, much performance writing betrays the "embodiedness" it seeks to describe; Taylor coins terms that do not derive from literary sources. The repertoire of her title is her term for a "non-archival system of transfer" that can capture the ephemeral trace of performance. By providing her reader with a kind of archive of affect, Taylor makes the body central. She argues that the repertoire "allows for an alternative perspective on historical processes...by following traditions of embodied practice" instead of literary rhetoric. As an alternative to "narrative" she offers scenario, a term with a theatrical genealogy, meaning an open-ended " sketch or outline" as a way to connote colonial encounters. For example, Taylor wittily names the scenario in which we are encouraged to "overlook the displacement and disappearance of native peoples" at the root of the popular show Survivor, "Fantasy Island." Taylor expands on this theme in her second chapter, Scenarios of Discovery: Reflections on Performance and Ethnography. She writes, "Using scenario as a paradigm for understanding social structures and behaviors might allow us to draw from the repertoire as well as the archive."
Using these terms as "portable frameworks" and moving in and out of first person experience, Taylor explores a range of hemispheric performances. Chapters on the Mexican mestizaje, campy Latino American psychic Walter Mercado, and the ways that minority populations mourned Princess Diana, explore the hybrid spaces between perception and embodied culture. Taylor revisits the Argentinean "Dirty War"
(the topic of her book Disappearing Acts) in her chapter on H.I.J.O.S. -the children of the disappeared- and the "DNA of performance" that links them with their absent parents. Chapters on Brazilian performance artist Denise Stoklos, witnessing 9/11 and a 1998 Central Park performance of Rumba musicians interrupted by the NYPD, investigate the complex relations between hegemonic power and the anarchic spirit of live performance against a background of historic violence.
This book is a path-making piece of scholarship that recognizes performance as a valid focus of analysis. It creates a dialogue between area and performance studies that values the unique features of both. The questions Diana Taylor asks in Archive and the Repertoire extend beyond this work and will shape a terrain of inquiry in performance studies for years to come.The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (John Hope Franklin Center Book) OverviewIn The Archive and the Repertoire preeminent performance studies scholar Diana Taylor provides a new understanding of the vital role of performance in the Americas. From plays to official events to grassroots protests, performance, she argues, must be taken seriously as a means of storing and transmitting knowledge. Taylor reveals how the repertoire of embodied memory—conveyed in gestures, the spoken word, movement, dance, song, and other performances—offers alternative perspectives to those derived from the written archive and is particularly useful to a reconsideration of historical processes of transnational contact. The Archive and the Repertoire invites a remapping of the Americas based on traditions of embodied practice.Examining various genres of performance including demonstrations by the children of the disappeared in Argentina, the Peruvian theatre group Yuyachkani, and televised astrological readings by Univision personality Walter Mercado, Taylor explores how the archive and the repertoire work together to make political claims, transmit traumatic memory, and forge a new sense of cultural identity. Through her consideration of performances such as Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña's show Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit . . . , Taylor illuminates how scenarios of discovery and conquest haunt the Americas, trapping even those who attempt to dismantle them. Meditating on events like those of September 11, 2001 and media representations of them, she examines both the crucial role of performance in contemporary culture and her own role as witness to and participant in hemispheric dramas. The Archive and the Repertoire is a compelling demonstration of the many ways that the study of performance enables a deeper understanding of the past and present, of ourselves and others.

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Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality (Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics) Review

Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality (Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics)
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Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality (Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics) ReviewI bought this book on a whim, and have found it compelling reading ever since. It contains excellently written essays which very thoroughly explore their immediate subject. As a book on linguistics, however, be prepared for occasionally arcane essays like "The Colour of His Eyes: Polari and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence". If you are interested in language issues and would like to broaden your world-view, I can't recommend this book enough.
My favourite line, from the essay on Gay Man's English: "Honey, what you see is what you get!" Fortunately, with this book, you get more than what you see.Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality (Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics) Overview

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The Parrot's Theorem: A Novel Review

The Parrot's Theorem: A Novel
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The Parrot's Theorem: A Novel ReviewI was immediately drawn in by the first few lines of The Parrot's Theorem, where Max, a deaf boy living in Paris comes to the aid of a parrot being beaten by two men. From there, I was lead into a journey where Max, his twin siblings, and his friend Mr. Ruche wade through nearly the entire history of mathematics to unravel the circumstances behind the suspiscious demise of Mr. Ruche's friend, Elgar Grosovure.
Max brings home the wounded, and now silent, parrot just as Mr. Ruche has received a cryptic letter from his old friend in Brazil. Grosovure writes that he will be sending Mr. Ruche - an antique bookseller - his entire reference library of mathematical texts and histories because Mr. Ruche will care for them, or at least sell them to "the right kiind of person." Yet, as the letter goes on, it emerges that Grosovure is sending the library because he is expecting to be killed by some people who would like to extract information from him, regarding a proof of a mathematical theorem that Grosovure has been working on in private, hidden away in the rainforest.
At this point, the library arrives, and the unraveling of the mystery begins. As the story progress, the various threads begin to intermingle and converge: of Mr. Ruche's past friendship with Grosovure, their differences and love for philosophy and mathematics; a single mother with adopted children, and their discovery of that fact; a rare breed of talking parrot who speaks in mysterious portions of theorems and history - all these weave together in a truly original way to create a story that is both suspenseful and truly enlightening.
Or tries to, anyway. After the first third of the book, I began to tire of Guedj's poor and idealized delineation of Jon and Lea - the twins, who do most of the expository dialog - as reluctant and nascent geniuses, capable of absorbing mathematical proofs within minutes, and contiually burning the midnight oil to supply their own, more elegant versions of these proofs. Max who initially drew me into the book, is capable of speech (owing to the fact that his deafness was slow onset) which calls into question the reason for the device at all. Further observations regarding Guedj's writing are a variation on this theme: poor characterization, and dialog which is simply a slave to the intellectual agenda of the book.
Yet, it is this agenda that kept me reading The Parrot's Theorem all the way to the end: Guedj not only has a profound respect for the history and evolution of mathematics, but a terrific sense of the human drama and poetry involved in thousands of years of human intellectual development. The historical facts are interesting, the biographical material is fascinating - the proofs of the theorems are well outlined and comprehensible even to a straight C student who flunked Calculus.
The cover of The Parrot's Theorem makes many promises about this being a renaissance-style novel, a "European" novel, and so on, but this is not a book suited for average kids or even many adults. Yet, simply on the material covered, it is much more palatable that sitting down with Euclid's Elements or Newton's works. If you are interested in the history of mathematics, and are patient with a writer who hasn't yet mastered believable plot and dialog, you may really enjoy The Parrot's Theorem, a truly unique book.The Parrot's Theorem: A Novel Overview

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Common Sense: A Political History Review

Common Sense: A Political History
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Common Sense: A Political History ReviewThomas Paine as one of history's instigators of fashionable political wisdom stated: "He that rebels against reason is a real rebel, but he that in defense of reason rebels against tyranny has a better title to Defender of the Faith, than George the Third."
And preceding Paine's fractional application of common sense upon American popular democracy, Sophia Rosenfeld reveals that it functioned in sundry manners in Britain and Europe during the Enlightenment and the political era which followed. In "Common Sense: A Political History" Rosenfeld (professor of history; author: "A Revolution in Language") discloses how populist notions have often been employed as a political devices; furthermore, common sense and populist thought have been flexible, a bit ambiguous, and mutable.
Paine wrote: "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."
In Common Sense: A Political History, historian Sophia Rosenfeld explores the genesis of the phrase "common sense" and the evolution of its definition (and application) over the years. Arresting and enlightening, this book has as much to say about political history as it does the present day.
The Wall Street Journal opined:
"Rosenfeld seeks to explain how the "common sense" of the people became a touchstone of political wisdom and a ubiquitous catch-phrase in political debate across the Western world...Rosenfeld is a shrewd and inventive historian. She has excavated the rhetoric of common sense from an impressive number of sites and has shaped this diverse evidence into a smart and plausible narrative. She writes with verve... Rosenfeld warns us that common sense is sometimes just an honorific that we bestow upon our prejudices."
Rosenfeld offers many interesting and litigious views that often reveal little-known details and ideas regarding the founding of America and its political history.
Paine also asserted: "Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
Endorsed by:
- David Armitage
- Daniel Rodgers
- Christopher Grasso
- WSJ
- And others.
Rosenfeld writes: "Common Sense. Good luck finding a law-maker or pundit who does not claim it as his (or her) most trusted ally. We can argue over how we got to this point or even whether politics is better or worse off a result. Those questions animate Common Sense: A Political History. One thing, however, is beyond dispute. The idea of common sense has led to a lot of truly dreadful music. And its antithesis, nonsense--a big-time insult in the world of politics--has inspired some of the best music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. As the great French writer Denis Diderot put it several centuries ago, when the politics of common sense was just coming into its own, a man has in common sense just about everything necessary to be "a good father, a good husband, a good merchant, [and] a good man," not to mention "a bad poet, a bad musician, a bad painter, [and] a very dull lover."Moreover Thomas Paine and a few other political writers were critics of established religion. Paine opined: "It is not a God, just and good, but a devil, under the name of God, that the Bible describes."
The author of "Common Sense" added: "There are matters in the Bible, said to be done by the express commandment of God, that are shocking to humanity and to every idea we have of moral justice."
In touching revealed religion I prefer, but do not comprehensively affirm, the Common Sense philosophy of Thomas Reid: "In the strict and proper sense, I take an efficient cause to be a being who had power to produce the effect, and exerted that power for that purpose."
The term "common sense" is ambiguous and often difficult to define, I partially concur with Reid's statement: "There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words."
This volume offers a unique look at the varied initiators of common sense and populist thought in history. Furthermore, Rosenfeld furnishes a fresh and unique report concerning the era of revolutions as she describes what this period bestowed to the present and future political development.
See the book that defends the necessity of theistic ethics:
There Are Moral Absolutes: How to Be Absolutely Sure That Christianity Alone Supplies The Conditions For Moral Certainty Through Presuppositional ApologeticsCommon Sense: A Political History Overview
Common sense has always been a cornerstone of American politics. In 1776, Tom Paine's vital pamphlet with that title sparked the American Revolution. And today, common sense—the wisdom of ordinary people, knowledge so self-evident that it is beyond debate—remains a powerful political ideal, utilized alike by George W. Bush's aw-shucks articulations and Barack Obama's down-to-earth reasonableness. But far from self-evident is where our faith in common sense comes from and how its populist logic has shaped modern democracy. Common Sense: A Political History is the first book to explore this essential political phenomenon.

The story begins in the aftermath of England's Glorious Revolution, when common sense first became a political ideal worth struggling over. Sophia Rosenfeld's accessible and insightful account then wends its way across two continents and multiple centuries, revealing the remarkable individuals who appropriated the old, seemingly universal idea of common sense and the new strategic uses they made of it. Paine may have boasted that common sense is always on the side of the people and opposed to the rule of kings, but Rosenfeld demonstrates that common sense has been used to foster demagoguery and exclusivity as well as popular sovereignty. She provides a new account of the transatlantic Enlightenment and the Age of Revolutions, and offers a fresh reading on what the eighteenth century bequeathed to the political ferment of our own time. Far from commonsensical, the history of common sense turns out to be rife with paradox and surprise.
(20110413)

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Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter Review

Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter
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Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter ReviewAs a fan of JM's paintings,it was fun to read the soap-opera version of her bio.
She was definitely a head case. Could she have been even better if she wasn't so conflicted and alcoholic. Her versions of the substance of her paintings are all over the place.
The author did great research and provided source material. There probably were a lot of JM's acquaintences who were eager to give their perception or anecdotes of what happened. It's not easy or fun being around an alcoholic in my experience.
Things that annoyed me about the book were:
1. Extensive description of certain paintings which are not shown in the book (or even in the Livingston book).
2. The painting which are shown don't have any size listed.
3. Numerous events are described with a month and day date but no year; e.g., Franz Klines death.
Other things:
1. It's interesting that I or my painter friends have never heard of Jean-Paul Riopelle (JM's partner for several years) as Canada's most famous artist. I subscribe to Art Forum and read Art News and surf the web, and have never come across his name, until now. I like some of his paintings I found on the internet; especially one that is Joan-Mitchell like. I don't think they allow links here, but it's a layered abstract with black, viney leaves on top of yellow viney leaves with a white background (coloured ink on paper, 18 x 24~.). It's at artnet.com . One would think that he would get some mention in the U.S. media.
2. With the artworld having expanded out geographically from NYC, do artists have fraternal or intimate connections now as JM and her milieu did?
3. The term abstract impressionism certainly applies in JM's later paintings at La Tour in Vetheuil.
I hadn't thought of them in that way before.
--That's all for now.
Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter Overview"Gee, Joan, if only you were French and male and dead." —New York art dealer to Joan Mitchell, the 1950sShe was a steel heiress from the Midwest—Chicago and Lake Forest (her grandfather built Chicago's bridges and worked for Andrew Carnegie). She was a daughter of the American Revolution—Anglo-Saxon, Republican, Episcopalian. She was tough, disciplined, courageous, dazzling, and went up against the masculine art world at its most entrenched, made her way in it, and disproved their notion that women couldn't paint.Joan Mitchell is the first full-scale biography of the abstract expressionist painter who came of age in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s; a portrait of an outrageous artist and her struggling artist world, painters making their way in the second part of America's twentieth century. As a young girl she was a champion figure skater, and though she lacked balance and coordination, accomplished one athletic triumph after another, until giving up competitive skating to become a painter. Mitchell saw people and things in color; color and emotion were the same to her. She said, "I use the past to make my pic[tures] and I want all of it and even you and me in candlelight on the train and every ‘lover' I've ever had—every friend—nothing closed out. It's all part of me and I want to confront it and sleep with it—the dreams—and paint it."Her work had an unerring sense of formal rectitude, daring, and discipline, as well as delicacy, grace, and awkwardness.Mitchell exuded a young, smoky, tough glamour and was thought of as "sexy as hell."Albers writes about how Mitchell married her girlhood pal, Barnet Rosset, Jr.—scion of a financier who was head of Chicago's Metropolitan Trust and partner of Jimmy Roosevelt. Rosset went on to buy Grove Press in 1951, at Mitchell's urging, and to publish Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, et al., making Grove into the great avant-garde publishing house of its time. Mitchell's life was messy and reckless: in New York and East Hampton carousing with de Kooning, Frank O'Hara, James Schuyler, Jane Freilicher, Franz Kline, Helen Frankenthaler, and others; going to clambakes, cocktail parties, softball games—and living an entirely different existence in Paris and Vétheuil.Mitchell's inner life embraced a world beyond her own craft, especially literature . . . her compositions were informed by imagined landscapes or feelings about places. In Joan Mitchell, Patricia Albers brilliantly reconstructs the painter's large and impassioned life: her growing prominence as an artist; her marriage and affairs; her friendships with poets and painters; her extraordinary work. Joan Mitchell re-creates the times, the people, and her worlds from the 1920s through the 1990s and brings it all spectacularly to life.

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Australian Sign Language (Auslan): An introduction to sign language linguistics Review

Australian Sign Language (Auslan): An introduction to sign language linguistics
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Australian Sign Language (Auslan): An introduction to sign language linguistics ReviewExcellent introduction to both Auslan and sign language linguistics. Clearly written. A must-have for BANZSL linguistics, interpreting and Deaf studies students.Australian Sign Language (Auslan): An introduction to sign language linguistics OverviewThis is first comprehensive introduction to the linguistics of Auslan, the sign language of Australia. Assuming no prior background in language study, it explores each key aspect of the structure of Auslan, providing an accessible overview of its grammar (how sentences are structured), phonology (the building blocks of signs), morphology (the structure of signs), lexicon (vocabulary), semantics (how meaning is created), and discourse (how Auslan is used in context). The authors also discuss a range of myths and misunderstandings about sign languages, provide an insight into the history and development of Auslan, and show how Auslan is related to other sign languages, such as those used in Britain, the USA and New Zealand. Complete with clear illustrations of the signs in use and useful further reading lists, this is an ideal resource for anyone interested in Auslan, as well as those seeking a clear, general introduction to sign language linguistics.

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Alphabetter Juice: or, The Joy of Text Review

Alphabetter Juice: or, The Joy of Text
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Alphabetter Juice: or, The Joy of Text ReviewThis title grabbed my eye on the new books shelf at the local public library, and I've laughed aloud more in the past two days reading it than in the past several months combined. It is both educational and entertaining. I'm ordering a copy as birthday gift for my son, who is an English major and has of late taken to referring to himself as "a scholar." It's the ideal busy thinking man's bathroom book, filled with etymologies and definitions that are brief, informative, and humorous.Alphabetter Juice: or, The Joy of Text Overview

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The Psychology of Language: From Data To Theory Review

The Psychology of Language: From Data To Theory
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The Psychology of Language: From Data To Theory ReviewEasy to read and understand. Extensive Literature review. Great for anyone interested in learning about how language works and where the research has been and plans to go.The Psychology of Language: From Data To Theory OverviewThe Psychology of Language (2nd Edition) is a thorough revision and update of the popular first edition. Comprehensive and contemporary, it contains all the student needs to know on the topic, presenting difficult material in a lively and accessible way. There is coverage of all the core topics in language in the undergraduate curriculum and the author interweaves evidence from the various approaches including cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and connectionist modelling. This edition includes expanded coverage of many topics including reading development, bilingualism, and the relation between language and memory.

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1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die Review

1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
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1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die ReviewAlthough this book provided an acceptably organized compilation of movie classics, I was bugged by the fact that reviews/thoughts included spoilers, or revelations of the movies' endings.
I purchased this book in order to discover movies I knew not of previously or had heard of and was interested in seeing. The occasional spoilers are given without warning and made me read with caution to those movies that I did not yet know the outcome of, which was quite tedious.
Overall, the reviews were convincing and thoughtful when not completely blatant, but do proceed with caution.1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die Overview

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Lightning: A Novel Review

Lightning: A Novel
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Lightning: A Novel ReviewThomas Edison, masterminding a dubious turn-of-the 20th century media event, staged the electrocution death of Topsy, an unfortunate Coney Island elephant, on January 4, 1903. Blasting over six thousand volts through the poor pachyderm, Edison, a hardball entrepreneur, demonstrated the alleged dangers of a competing technology--alternating electrical current, otherwise known as AC. Edison's own technology, direct current, DC, was already electrifying upscale New York City neighborhoods and businesses, generating serious cash--much was at stake. Though that stunt may have won Edison the immediate public relations battle, he ultimately lost the long-term war. Alternating current, a superior and truly innovative technology, emerged on top of the heap, changed the world. QED.
But Nikola Tesla, the Serbian inventor and equally showy pitchman of world-beating alternating current, a steampunk Steve Jobs, ultimately didn't win much. He died many years later, broke and broken amidst the debris of fast lane 20th century life, a tragic genius of electrical power, his long list of inventions--alternating current, radar, wireless transmission, ubiquitous, yet somehow beyond his grasp, his interests diluted and lost thanks to his naiveté with big-time investor patrons like J. P. Morgan or George Westinghouse. Tesla, in a fit of crazed magnanimity, actually tore up a contract with Westinghouse that had entitled him to an amazing royalty of $2.50 per horsepower of electric power sold by his AC technology--not a wise move.
In this charming, quirky novel, the venerable French writer Jean Echenoz tells a short Faustian technology tale, a roman a clef, of Gregor, fictionalized stand-in for the great Serbian visionary, a Beckettian lost man, one of the 20th century's great coulda-shoulda's. Gregor didn't make a deal with the devil, but maybe he should've.
Echenoz, a present master of French fiction, born in 1947, is a risk-taker, a bit of a throwback to the exotic writers of the nouveau roman movement of the 1950s and `60s. Zigging when everybody else was zagging in postwar relief, these writers threw fizzing bombs at conventional fiction, tossing plot, description and character under the revolutionary literary bus. Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marguerite Duras or perhaps even Samuel Beckett, produced crazy novels of pure description, cinematically detailed, with surface-only views of life, unreadable for many. For these writers, the interior world or brooding theatrical moralizing was of little interest.
And in Lightning, (published in Paris last year as Des Eclairs, the third in a series of brief, biographical novels, Ravel, and Running, both tales of notable early 20th century lost men), Echenoz skims the sepia-toned, impeccably dressed, impenetrable surface of Gregor, a weird, asexual, lightning-obsessed, germaphobe, bird fancier--the equal of TV's strangely brilliant Monk, the obsessive-compulsive, detail-mad detective. What makes Gregor tick? Why's he like that? Was it because he was born under a bad sign, a cataclysmic lightning-laced thunderstorm, beautifully depicted in the novel's opening? We'll never know.
But fear not, Lightning, is a delight to read, beautifully translated from the French into a smoothly colloquial English by Linda Coverdale. Though the tale's load of electrical engineering wizardry detail is part of the novel's fabric--which may be for some a bit daunting, the reader has the benefit of knowing how the big technology picture turned out. Pretty well, thank you. And English majors are welcome and may successfully apply. Really. It's Echenoz's narrative voice, his teller of tales present tense, chatty voice, a self-deprecating, friendly `I', that does the trick, completely engaging the reader like a Donald Barthelme matter of fact Jiminy Cricket on-our-shoulder guide as we watch Gregor bumble on his picaresque journey through life--working to fulfill his lifelong dream: free energy to everybody, free energy to power the world or his visionary "wireless world system of communications." Sound familiar? These are some goals.
About that voice. Here's Echenoz's narrator, commiserating with the reader about Gregor's obsession with New York's pigeons:
"Pigeons? I mean really. The skulking, deceitful, boring, silly, feeble mindless, vile, vain pigeon....one should above all remember that when buying at the butcher's, pigeon is not very expensive."
Then, moving directly to the first line of the next chapter, continuing the thought:
"Because now Gregor is stone broke."
Echenoz deftly breaks that reader-author scrim, engaging and seductive.
And then, the narrator goes on:
"Personally, I've had about enough of them, these pigeons. And you've had enough of them too, I can tell. We've had enough of them and to tell the truth, fickle and ungrateful things that they are, the pigeons themselves have had enough of Gregor."
But it's not only the endearing voice. It's the magical writing itself, the lyrical language. Here, Echenoz describes Gregor, giving a product demonstration, holding an audience rapt:
"A tall wading bird in a swallow-tail coat, white tie, and patent-leather shoes with thick insulating cork-lined soles that put him, along with his top hat, at close to seven feet, Gregor stands out at first against the gloom of the stage, but spotlights gradually reveal around him a panoply of high-frequency equipment. A dim alcove contains Gregor's softly glowing coils, fluorescent lamps, and his eternal tubes, all gleaming off and on as if they were breathing. Here and there, flashes of light dart crackling from revolving gears. Small copper spheres or ovoids spin all by themselves atop velvet-draped tables, reversing direction at regular intervals."
This, then, is the ultimate magic of this tale of invention and innovation--the words, each in their precise place, obsessive in their detail, like Gregor. We also marvel at the visionary technology, which, as always, is indistinguishable from magic. Yes, it's a shame about Gregor (Tesla) and his tragically raw deal, but, in the end, we're living his future and it's rather fabulous. Lucky for us. There's something very satisfying about that.
Topsy did not die in vain.Lightning: A Novel OverviewDrawn from the life of Nikola Tesla, one of the greatest inventors of his time,Lightning is a captivating tale of one man's curious fascination with the marvels of science.Hailed by the Washington Post as "the most distinctive voice of his generation," Echenoz traces the notable career of Gregor, a precocious young engineer from Eastern Europe, who travels across the Atlantic at the age of twenty-eight to work alongside Thomas Edison, with whom he later holds a long-lasting rivalry. After his discovery of alternating current, Gregor quickly begins to astound the world with his other brilliant inventions, including everything from radio, radar, and wireless communication to cellular technology, remote control, and the electron microscope.Echenoz gradually reveals the eccentric inner world of a solitary man who holdsa rare gift for imagining devices well before they come into existence. Gregor is a recluse—an odd and enigmatic intellect who avoids women and instead prefers spending hours a day courting pigeons in Central Park.Winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, Echenoz once again demonstrateshis astonishing abilities as a prose stylist as he vividly captures the life of an isolated genius. A beautifully crafted portrait of a man who prefers the company of lightning in the Colorado desert to that of other human beings, Lightning is a dazzling new work from one of the world's leading contemporary authors.

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Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends Review

Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends
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Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends ReviewThis is one of the few books that I've read in the past few months that offers a fascinating treasure trove of memorable facts, in this instance about Paris and the evolution of the Belle Epoque. In places it is excellent and in many others merely irritating - with abrupt changes in topic that are confusing with the most awkward of segues. Topic A is discussed, Topic B is then introduced with no continuity, to move to Topic C and then move back to Topic A where sometimes the relationship with Topic B is clarified and more often not. Clearly the author knows her subject backwards - however she frequently forgets the reader. For instance on page 57 in discussing the actress Sarah Bernhardt, the author notes that "she might not have the talent to become a sculptor". The reader stops to wonder whether sculptor was inserted in error as the previous pages were on Rodin. But no, this is correct - just the extremely awkward writing in the introduction to the section While the subject matter is never dull this book is is not an easy read and would have benefited from the input of a good editor.
The illustrations are of poor quality and not always relevant to the text while others are missing. An example of the latter is the major buildup to Mucha's Gismonda poster (p.251) which has the reader turning pages to see. It is absent while in the next few pages a photo of a statue of Dreyfus that is lacking in contrast gratuitously occupies space.
While Dr. McAuliffe is clearly an expert of Paris, she is not the most fluid of writers and there is just so much information shoe horned into limited space. There is also far too much in the way of repetition - Cesar Ritz's progression as hotelier to the wealthy is repeated in detail twice and at least 4 other times in passing and this is just one example. Others include the Statue of Liberty appearing above the roofs of houses during its construction being mentioned in several places (we got it the first time!), the Panama Canal and, inevitably the Tour Eiffel. I was also surprised about the minimal detail on the Metro. If this book were better written and edited and properly illustrated- it would easily rate 5 stars PLUS!Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends OverviewA humiliating military defeat by Bismarck's Germany, a brutal siege, and a bloody uprising-Paris in 1871 was a shambles, and the question loomed, "Could this extraordinary city even survive?"Mary McAuliffe takes the reader back to these perilous years following the abrupt collapse of the Second Empire and France's uncertain venture into the Third Republic. By 1900, Paris had recovered and the Belle Epoque was in full flower, but the decades between were difficult, marked by struggles between republicans and monarchists, the Republic and the Church, and an ongoing economic malaise, darkened by a rising tide of virulent anti-Semitism.Yet these same years also witnessed an extraordinary blossoming in art, literature, poetry, and music, with the Parisian cultural scene dramatically upended by revolutionaries such as Monet, Zola, Rodin, and Debussy, even while Gustave Eiffel was challenging architectural tradition with his iconic tower. Through the eyes of these pioneers and others, including Sarah Bernhardt, Georges Clemenceau, Marie Curie, and César Ritz, we witness their struggles with the forces of tradition during the final years of a century hurtling towards its close. Through rich illustrations and evocative narrative, McAuliffe brings this vibrant and seminal era to life.

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My Dyslexia Review

My Dyslexia
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My Dyslexia ReviewI am a speech-language pathologist specializing in reading and written language disorders. Our company, Lexercise.com, has been working hard to make affordable, professional evaluation and treatment available online to dyslexics no matter where they live. I have written a post for the Lexercise.com blog encouraging dyslexics, parents and practitioners to read My Dyslexia.
Schultz title, My Dyslexia, lets readers know that he is describing is HIS journey with this occult and often poorly understood condition. Schultz says that his self-awareness "was fashioned by years of psychotherapy and self-analysis and introspection necessary to the writing of poetry." He describes the confusion of trying to understand "where my dyslexia stopped and some bizarre emotional problem began."
This isn't a new story. There are many other accounts written by dyslexics. Contemporary research journals document the negative academic, social and emotional cascade associated with dyslexia. But Schultz uses his poetic, narrator's voice to tell a particularly compelling and moving personal story. His descriptions are concise and visceral, just what you'd expect of an award-winning poet. He describes his childhood with a mother, who believed in him and saw his talents, yet didn't know where to turn for help: "I can well imagine the disheveled logic and desperation that went into her not seeking help for me, except for the remedial help forced on her by my school."
One of my favorite descriptions is of the moment when Schultz first experienced reading: "The process of leaping over my own incapacities to the excitement in the narrator's voice...."; "I seemed to be 'listening' (not reading) to a voice in my own head, to a personage invented by my own fantasies."
Schultz occasionally departs from his personal narrative to draw conclusions: "There is one final clue to dyslexia in children and adults alike: the fact that they are in pain. Dyslexia inflicts pain. It represents a major assault on self-esteem." He quotes the International Dyslexia Association, concluding that many teaching and learning methods "only serve normal learners and are 'detrimental to the at-risk learner' who needs a more 'systematic, structured, multi-sensory approach.'"
Schultz says that he didn't understand that his own "breakdown" was "linguistic and phonetic" until recently, when his son, Eli, was diagnosed with dyslexia by a neuropsychologist, and he recognized the same symptoms in himself. Yet he says, "Even with modern science and technology, every dyslexic must forge his own 'strategy for survival.' " Really? While persistence and self-determination are certainly omnipotent for dealing with any personal challenge, it certainly doesn't sound like Eli has had to completely "forge his own strategy." In fact, Schwartz beautifully describes how Eli is thriving with "self-knowledge and support."
For the sake of the one child in five who suffers from dyslexia, I hope one message that readers take from My Dyslexia is that the path Schultz has made possible for his son, through professional evaluation and treatment, is faster, surer and less painful than was his own torturous path, through "years of psychotherapy and self-analysis and introspection."
Finally, in purchasing My Dyslexia for my Kindle I was startled to read this message: < The publisher has requested not to enable Text-to-Speech for this title.> Of all books, it seems like this one should have Text-to-Speech enabled! I wonder why the publisher would request not to enable Text-to-Speech for a book about dyslexia?
My Dyslexia Overview
An inspiring memoir of a Pulitzer Prize winner's triumph over disability.
Despite winning the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2008, Philip Schultz could never shake the feeling of being exiled to the "dummy class" in school, where he was largely ignored by his teachers and peers and not expected to succeed. Not until many years later, when his oldest son was diagnosed with dyslexia, did Schultz realize that he suffered from the same condition. In his moving memoir, Schultz traces his difficult childhood and his new understanding of his early years. In doing so, he shows how a boy who did not learn to read until he was eleven went on to become a prize-winning poet by sheer force of determination. His balancing act-life as a member of a family with not one but two dyslexics, countered by his intellectual and creative successes as a writer-reveals an inspiring story of the strengths of the human mind.

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Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin: Forty Years of Funny Stuff Review

Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin: Forty Years of Funny Stuff
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Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin: Forty Years of Funny Stuff ReviewThoroughly delightful. Calvin's collection is LOL entertaining and certain to lift your spirits. Now I know what happened to my mother's favorite, chicken a la king. Maybe the chicken croquettes are there as well.Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin: Forty Years of Funny Stuff OverviewFor at least forty years, Calvin Trillin has committed blatant acts of funniness all over the place—in The New Yorker, in one-man off-Broadway shows, in his "deadline poetry" for The Nation, in comic novels like Tepper Isn't Going Out, in books chronicling his adventures as a happy eater, and in the column USA Today called "simply the funniest regular column in journalism."Now Trillin selects the best of his funny stuff and organizes it into topics like high finance ("My long-term investment strategy has been criticized as being entirely too dependent on Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes") and the literary life ("The average shelf life of a book is somewhere between milk and yogurt.")In Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin, the author deals with such subjects as the horrors of witnessing a voodoo economics ceremony and the mystery of how his mother managed for thirty years to feed her family nothing but leftovers ("We have a team of anthropologists in there now looking for the original meal") and the true story behind the Shoe Bomber: "The one terrorist in England with a sense of humor, a man known as Khalid the Droll, had said to the cell, 'I bet I can get them all to take off their shoes in airports.' " He remembers Sarah Palin with a poem called "On a Clear Day, I See Vladivostok" and John Edwards with one called "Yes, I Know He's a Mill Worker's Son, but There's Hollywood in That Hair." In this, the definitive collection of his humor, Calvin Trillin is prescient, insightful, and invariably hilarious.

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To the Hermitage Review

To the Hermitage
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To the Hermitage ReviewDespite the reverence with which Bradbury is regarded and the fact that this was his last book, it will probably never receive a literary award. Parts of it are insightfully descriptive, thoughtful, humorous, and fun to read, but it lacks the unity (and editing!) which would make it a coherent whole, feeling more like a draft than a finished product.
Two story lines unfold on parallel tracks. Denis Diderot is at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, visiting the court of Catherine the Great and discussing philosophy with her every afternoon in the hope that she will become an enlightened leader, rather than an autocratic despot. The second, less effective story involves seven contemporary characters--a writer, a diplomat, a carpenter, an opera singer, a trade unionist, a dramatist, and a "funky professor" with "I Love Deconstruction" on his hat. This motley group, representing some of the areas in which Diderot was interested, is participating in the Diderot Project, the object of which is to find all the books and papers which once belonged to Diderot and which he sold to Catherine for his "pension and posterity." All participants regard this as a junket--a free trip.
The atmosphere of 18th century Russia and of the Age of Enlightenment is vivid, and it is easy for the reader to feel the philosophical give and take of the discussions between Diderot and Catherine. The lengthy discussions, with references to Voltaire, Rousseau, Lawrence Sterne, David Garrick, and Dr. Johnson, among others, are intriguing for the connections they make, and they are often humorous, but they are too long and heavy here, and they weigh down and eventually bury the slim plot.
As for the Diderot Project participants, they are sketchy characters, and one never really gets to understand them. And why someone would fund this supposed project when its goals seem so amorphous and the objectives in Russia so nebulous remains a permanent (and unrealistic) mystery. The fact that the group arrives just as Yeltsin dismisses the Duma and a possible coup or revolution is taking place could have been used to show some nice parallels and contrasts with the rule of Catherine and the ideas of Diderot, but the author's selection of details which would make this clear to the reader just didn't happen.
The character of Galina, a discussion of postmortemism (the idea that writers all borrow directly from previous generations, thereby living forever), and the meeting of Diderot and Thomas Jefferson (and suggestion that Diderot thereby contributed to the U.S. Constitution) are among the many wonderful features of this book, but they are hidden away in this 500-page attic of a book. Mary WhippleTo the Hermitage Overview

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French Without Toil Review

French Without Toil
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French Without Toil ReviewFrench Without Toil was the first Assimil program I purchased. I used it as a textbook at night school, then bought the audio recordings before travelling to France. The program enabled me to get by in difficult situations. I followed it up with Assimil German (I taught in a German school and did public speaking in German) then with Assimil Italian, Spanish, Russian and Dutch.
The books are divided into short lessons, one per day, which take about 30 minutes. I usually broke these up into segments of ten minutes several times a day. I found I could get by in the language and hold a simple conversation after a couple of months and was fairly fluent after about four or five months.
The program is in two "waves". In the first wave you concentrate on understanding what you read and hear. In the second wave, after a couple of months, you go back to the beginning and do some exercises, which by now you find easy, as you continue with the first wave to the end. I found I had a good knowledge of grammar and sentence construction. I would certainly use the program if I were studying for a school examination or if I had to work in the country where I needed the language.
The lessons are fun, each day's lesson contains a cartoon to illustrate something from the lesson, and you learn about the people and their customs.French Without Toil Overview

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