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The Basque Country: A Cultural History (Landscapes of the Imagination) Review

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The Basque Country: A Cultural History (Landscapes of the Imagination) ReviewThis is a very interesting and well-written book. It has a lot of historical information that is helpful in understanding the Basque people. A significant part of the book is organized by region, and at that point it reads more like a travel guide. I preferred the thematic parts of the book. I was disappointed that basic questions I had about Basque culture were not answered.The Basque Country: A Cultural History (Landscapes of the Imagination) OverviewThe Basque Country is a land of fascinating paradoxes and enigmas. Home to one of Europe's oldest peoples and most mysterious languages, with a living folklore rich in archaic rituals and dances, it also boasts a dynamic modern energy, with the reinvention of Bilbao creating a model for the twenty-first-century city. In The Basque Country, Paddy Woodworth takes us on a sweeping tour of this enchanting land. We discover a small territory which abounds in big contrasts, ranging from moist green valleys to semi-desert badlands, from snowy sierras to sandy beaches, from harsh industrial landscapes to bucolic beech woods. The book reveals how this often idyllic scenery forms the backdrop for a land of ancient and modern culture, where Basque poets still compose spontaneous stanzas in public contests and where strange age-old sports--rock lifting, goose decapitation--are still held at fiestas. Likewise, the region has made important contributions to modern culture, through novelists like Bernardo Atxaga, sculptors like Eduardo Chillida, painters like Zuluoaga, and cineastes like Julio Medem. And of course Bilbao's flagship museum, the Guggenheim, designed by Frank O. Gehry, may be the best work of architecture of the last century. Here then is a marvelous guide to the culture and landscape of one of the most intriguing places on Earth.

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Extremely Pale Rosé: A Very French Adventure Review

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Extremely Pale Rosé: A Very French Adventure ReviewExtremely Pale Rosé is a wonderful book for anyone who loves Provence or for anyone who wants to learn more about this special part of France. I'm one of the former and reading this book made me wish I was back there right now. Jamie's writing style is easy to read and the story holds your interest. There's lots of good, accurate information and you really feel you get to know Jamie, Tanya and Peter as you go along for the ride on their quest. Once you open this book and start reading, it's easy to forget the world around you. So, pour yourself a nice chilled glass of Provencal rosé and lose yourself in this fabulous book.
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Who Are We-And Should It Matter in the 21st Century? Review

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Who Are We-And Should It Matter in the 21st Century ReviewThe author is a well-traveled Columnist for the Guardian and the Nation magazines. He holds British citizenship and shares with us here some of the things he has learned as a result of having lived and traveled for extended periods of time in several countries (UK, the Netherlands, The West Indies, Sudan, and the U.S. among others). This is his attempt to unravel the enigma of identity, and to do so without resorting to a psychological explanation or a strictly psychological framework.
And although he makes a big dent in increasing our understanding about the phenomenon, especially regarding the invisibility of powerful (or majority groups, usually spelled white), I am still not sure that avoiding psychology entirely was the most efficacious approach to the topic of identity. That said if one reads between the lines, his take easily could be described as an oblique attack on the powerful, or majority groups who use their power for (among other stratagems) to selectively deny that they have an identity at all.
One of the best examples in the book is white denial about being guiltless about slavery -- since as they collectively put it, "they were not around at the time." Yet, Younge points out that this is a typical tactic of powerful groups since in the same breathe as their denials, they have no problem taking credit for more culturally enlightening and elevating behaviors that occurred at the same time as slavery? This kind of selective denial, according to the author, is just one of many tactics powerful groups (spelled white) use to evade the implications of their own neutralized and universalized identity.
Other tactics include calling anything that involves whiteness as "tradition," "heritage," or simply "history." His conclusion is that although everyone has an identity, using white subjectivity as the canvas upon which the humanity of the rest of the world is written gives whites a powerful unacknowledged and unwarranted advantage in the identity game. What the powerful do is typically seen as being universal and thus race-less, and identity-less, but in fact is no different than any other race or identity.
Another important tactic of the powerful (again spelled white but can be extended to any group) is to appoint a gatekeeper to promulgate political, social and economic edicts that ensure the purity of their identity by building walls to keep others out. On this issue, the author gives us a book full of meaningful anecdotes and vignettes that emphasizes how minor and superficial differences are enlarged and exaggerated to give them pregnant and unwarranted importance and meanings. The best of this lot in my view is his suggestion that no one went out to attack all "short-haired Christian white men" in the aftermath of Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma City? However, several "Muslim looking" men (two of whom were actually Sikhs) were killed in the aftermath of 911, and many others had to go into hiding fearing for their life. The author's explanation is that powerful groups preserve unto themselves the right to grant identity to "individuals" or to the "collectivity" depending on the nature of the act in question. If it brings honor they will claim it in the name of the collectivity; if not, it is seen as the act of a colorless individual. Again, whites have the right to selectively choose "to be," "or not to be," an identity depending on how it reflects on whites as a whole. But even white criminals are "humanized" in ways that non-whites are not. The U.S. spend an inordinate amount of time rolling out an explanatory and justificatory biography of Jeffery Dahlmer. However, had he been non-white, we could imagine that the focus would have been only on the fact that he was a murderous cannibal.
The upshot of Mr. Younge's treatment I believe is correct: It is that identities are rooted in material conditions, viz, political, social and economic resources and circumstances. The true power of identity is reserving the right to make up the rules of entry and meaningfulness, which he calls (racial) ideology. Somehow he closes on an optimistic note that belies the research in the book. Three Stars.
Who Are We-And Should It Matter in the 21st Century OverviewFrom those who insist that Barack Obama is Muslim to the European legislators who go to extraordinary lengths to ban items of clothing worn by a tiny percentage of their populations, Gary Younge shows, in this fascinating, witty, and provocative examination of the enduring legacy and obsession with identity in politics and everyday life, that how we define ourselves informs every aspect of our social, political, and personal lives.
Younge--a black British male of Caribbean descent living in Brooklyn, New York, who speaks fluent Russian and French--travels the planet in search of answers to why identity is so combustible. From Tiger Woods's legacy to the scandal over Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, he finds that identity is inescapable, but solidarity may not be as elusive as we fear.

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When Champagne Became French: Wine and the Making of a National Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science) Review

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When Champagne Became French: Wine and the Making of a National Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science) ReviewIn light of persistent international debates over whether and how nations should protect geographical indications, I found When Champagne Became French a useful read. Guy tells the story of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century conflicts over the definition of champagne and, in part, the definition of Frenchness as something connected to but distinct from the different parts of France.
The concept of terroir, something like the soul of the soil, that supposedly gives certain foodstuffs their unique qualities was much up for debate during the period, whereas currently the EU and France in particular give unquestioned legal protection to terms like "champagne." Guy points out that, although often understood as a fight between capital and labor, the at-times violent disputes between vine-growers and winemakers in the Champagne region were more complicated than that. Vine-growers in the core areas of the Marne were opposed both to bottlers who wanted to use grapes from other places to make champagne and to fellow vine-growers in those other places who benefited from that practice. Meanwhile, Marne bottlers also argued that the designation champagne should be legally protected, but they wanted to limit the definition to sparkling wine bottled in the area, regardless of the source of grapes.
Guy's story thus highlights champagne as an industrial product - not just because it requires a second processing to add the famous bubbles, but also because its production and consumption were profoundly affected by changes in transportation and modern advertising that helped make champagne the beverage of celebration and of Frenchness. The book is marred by repetitions of phrases, as if a series of journal articles had been simply stitched together, though I don't think these chapters were in fact published elsewhere. Nonetheless, I learned a fair amount about the social construction of terroir, a concept that supposedly represents a natural and immutable connection among an area of land, its inhabitants, and the products they produce.When Champagne Became French: Wine and the Making of a National Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science) OverviewWinner of the Outstanding Manuscript Award from Phi Alpha Theta, this work explains how nationhood emerges by viewing countries as cultural artifacts, a product of "invented traditions." In the case of France, scholars sharply disagree, not only over the nature of French national identity but also over the extent to which diverse and sometimes hostile provincial communities became integrated into the nation. InWhen Champagne Became French: Wine and the Making of a National Identity, Kolleen M. Guy offers a new perspective on this debate by looking at one of the central elements in French national culture-luxury wine-and the rural communities that profited from its production.Focusing on the development of the champagne industry between 1820 and 1920, Guy explores the role of private interests in the creation of national culture and in the nation-building process. Drawing on concepts from social and cultural history, she shows how champagne helped fuel the revolution in consumption as social groups searched for new ways to develop cohesion and to establish status. By the end of the nineteenth century, Guy concludes, the champagne-producing provinces in the department of Marne had developed a rhetoric of French identity that promoted its own marketing success as national. This ability to mask local interests as national concerns convinced government officials of the need, at both national and international levels, to protect champagne as a French patrimony.

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The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World's Most Glorious - and Perplexing - City Review

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The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World's Most Glorious - and Perplexing - City ReviewI absolutely adore David Lebovitz. I took a couple cooking classes from him several years ago and am a fan for life. His recipes are the absolute best plus he is smart and hilarious. So I had to have his book which shares incidents from his life since his move to Paris. It's a quick fun read that will ring true to anyone who's spent time there. David spares no one, from the French men in their religion revealing bathing suits to the American tourists in their fanny packs and plastic flip flops. David shares incidents which will have you laughing and glad you live in the U.S. yet earning for the unique charm and culinary delights of Paris. The book is filled with Parisian shopkeepers who would rather smoke outside or text their friends than sell you cheese that you are unworthy of; the mindless buracuracy needed to return an item that broke with its first use; and the endless strikes that usually start right outside his apartment. While David can be acerbic and slightly misanthropic, he's always endearing. Of course, the recipes look amazing and I can hardly wait to try them.The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World's Most Glorious - and Perplexing - City Overview

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Madre: Perilous Journeys with a Spanish Noun Review

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Madre: Perilous Journeys with a Spanish Noun ReviewI adopted Madre for my "Language and Society in Latin America" course last semester and I plan to use the book again. I assign Madre to build on the student's readings of Octavio Paz, Matthew Gutmann, and Gloria Anzaldua. Understanding how the word "madre" is used in Mexican slang does shed light on gender and sexual identities in Latin America, especially Mexico. The book is popular with students and they especially like the way the author lists and explains a plethora of expressions, such as "me vale madre" and `que padre"; and why, for example, saying "madre" is considered vulgar but "mamá" is not. Additionally, Bakewell's research supports the concept of linguistic relativity, demonstrating how grammatical categories of a language influence native-speaker perception. Her compelling and well-written book also presents a teachable moment regarding feminist ethnography. The author, a "gringa" anthropologist, crosses multiple borders and boundaries in her fieldwork. I recommend the book for those who teach courses on gender and sexuality in Latin America, language and culture, and ethnographic methods and want to balance out the literature assigned on machismo by men with focus on machismo by feminists and other women writers/investigators.
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My French Life Review

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My French Life ReviewI just returned from two weeks in Paris. As I was dreamily describing my adventure, someone asked, "Have you read My French Life?" I thought, just another book about I bought a house in France (or Italy) and this is how I dealt with the locals fixing it up, but this book is different. First of all it is so tastefully decorated, from its padded cover to its lovely photographs. In other words, so artistically French! I found myself reading it quickly when I opened it, and then I thought, slow down and savor this like an afternoon in a cafe. I buy a lot of books, read them and then pass them on, but this one I will keep to dip into over and over when I need a boost of French art, civility, and culture.My French Life Overview

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

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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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Bastard Tongues: A Trail-Blazing Linguist Finds Clues to Our Common Humanity in the World's Lowliest Languages Review

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Bastard Tongues: A Trail-Blazing Linguist Finds Clues to Our Common Humanity in the World's Lowliest Languages ReviewThis is the most interesting intellectual biography I've read. Bickerton's motto above helped him to wander into linguistics when he was teaching English literature in Africa, and then become one of the first scientists to discover how creole languages work.
Bickerton investigates the creole languages invented by the descendents of West Africans enslaved by European powers - - the English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch. He doesn't have the "Sitzfleisch" for library research, so he spends time in bars with the "unrighteous working class" in Columbia, Brazil, Barbados, Hawaii, Mauritius, and a dozen other places.
Bastard Tongues is a linguistic detective story. It takes Bickerton almost twenty years to find the answer to his mystery - - how creoles develop into full-fledged languages (just as complex as French or English) from the simpler contact languages (pidgins) that slaves used to communicate with their European overseers.
One of the most interesting of Bickerton's discoveries is how creoles exist on a continuum from "deeper" (almost incomprehensible to someone not a native speaker) to a level closer to the European language.
Bickerton goes into detail about how "the infernal machine" of a slave economy worked and shows how it was the nature of the slave economies in the "New World" that determined the evolution of their languages. Bickerton did as much for the field of history as linguistics. His analysis of the "expansion" and "establishment" phases of the American slave economies, and his investigation of the "maroons" - - escaped slaves, from the Spanish "cimarron," ("wild" or "runaway") is as interesting as the creole grammar.
His explanation of the TMA systems (tense, modality, aspect) in creoles will satisfy anybody who wants to get deep into interesting grammars without the academic jargon in some linguistics books. ("The difference between people and linguists is that people are interested in words and linguists are interested in grammar.")
Even if you're not overly interested in linguistics, but are interested in Hawaiin history, this book is fascinating. Sarah Roberts, one of Bickerton's students at the University of Hawaii, thought to look at court records rather than more literary sources for Hawaiin creole (or "Pidgin" with a capital P as it's called).
When Bickerton started in linguistics, there were three main theories about the origin of creoles: monogenesis (there was one ur-creole that influenced all the others), the superstrate theory (the creole mostly comes from the dominant language, say French or Portuguese), and the substrate theory (the creole mostly comes from the native language of the creole speakers (for instance, an indigenous West African language).
I never thought I'd say this in a review of a linguistics book, but SPOILER AHEAD.
Derek Bickerton showed that creole languages follow the same bioprogram that all human beings use to invent language, and that the reason creoles in the Pacific and South America resemble each other in basic grammar is because their users have the same mental equipment.
It looks like Bickerton's real intellectual leap wasn't so much in assuming creole-speaker-creators would use the same process as other kinds of language users, it was in NOTICING IN THE FIRST PLACE that the grammars of unrelated creoles were very much alike in very basic ways.
Bickerton's comparison of Saramaccan (a creole spoken in Surinam, with primarily English vocabulary) and Fa d'Ambu (the language of an island off West Central Africa with primarily Portuguese vocabulary) proves it.
Obviously, this owes something to Noam Chomsky's Universal Grammar (or Steven Pinker's "language instinct"), but Bickerton doesn't get involved in nature vs. nurture or biology vs. culture arguments. One thing I like about books by British and Australian linguists is that they don't feel the need to affirm or refute Chomsky's ideas. They take what works and leave what doesn't.
Bickerton also writes about Nicaraguan Sign Language, since deaf children create the same kind of full-bodied language that speaking children do, only using the mode of gesture instead of speech. Signed languages are just as complex as spoken ones. (Anyone who's read this far in this review will enjoy Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind by Margalit Fox.)
More controversially, Bickerton proposes what linguists historically have called "The Forbidden Experiment," and which the National Science Foundation once approved for him, then cancelled. There are stories of rulers and "scientists" who supposedly isolated children without a language to see what would happen. (Fox's book Talking Hands goes into this subject as well, since that's the situation for deaf children who find themselves in a community of other deaf children, in which case they will create a basic pidgin in sign. When deaf children find themselves with others who have a basic sign language, they grammaticalize the pidgin and create a creole, a fully-formed signed language.)
I'm not as sure as Bickerton that the experiment he's proposing is a good idea, but like a lot in this book, it makes you think.

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Almost French: Love and a New Life In Paris Review

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Almost French: Love and a New Life In Paris ReviewI am part of a newly started book club. The number of girls attending our dinners vary between 3 and 12, all Australian but me. We had problems choosing a new book last time, but in the end, we settled for "Almost French" by Sarah Turnbull as our third book to read. All member of our book club are foreigners, living in England, so we figured we could and would sympathize with another "expat".
Sarah met Frederic while on a (very late) gap-year in Europe. They had a good time and agreed to meet up in France later. In short, they meet up, fall in love, and Sarah never leaves Paris.
Moving to another country is a massive challenge. You are bound to do all the "Top 10" big no-no's probably within the first 2 weeks. Sarah's portrait of Parisians is hilariously funny, from the snobby shopkeepers, old ladies with their well groomed dogs, uptight cocktail parties where no one really mingles, and unfriendly dinners with Frederic's friends to mention a few.
However, when we discussed this book, we all commented that it was not very balanced - 90% Sarah and 10% the rest. With that ratio, we get to know Sarah quite well. Honestly, she tends to whine quite a bit. We go through the motions with her - lonely, bored and feeling useless and not welcome (I got tired of the author asking over and over and over again "why don't they like me?"). However, her frustration for not being able to speak the language I can sympathize with. I have been in the same situation myself. I studied Spanish in Latin America. Trust me, when you only can speak in present tense with a very limited vocabulary, you sound like an idiot and the conversation dies quickly... But the most pathetic incident is when she realizes that she doesn't actually live in Paris but outside the city limit (defined by the postcode). She makes such a big fuzz about it. I cannot understand the big deal, and how Frederic is putting up with it (and in the end agrees to move) is beyond me...
But there is so much more - what about the relationship, it must have been very difficult for the rest of the people involved, not just Sarah.. Surely, we could have gotten to know the lovely Frederic better, his parents, his friends and the rest of it.
We all fell in love with Frederic. My favorite scenes are when they are pulled over for a minor traffic violation in Paris, and Frederic are trying to pretend to be an Australian. The way he is doing this is to take the jumper off his shoulders and tie it around his waist! I laughed out loud, it is so true! The ever so correct French have their jumpers neatly around their shoulders, and the less formal Australian would just tie them around the waist. The other scene is when Sarah one Saturday morning is running to the bakery to get fresh bread for breakfast. On her way out, Frederic catches a glimpse of her and nearly has a heart attach. "Are you going out like that, wearing your gymnastic pantaloons?" he asks. Sarah completely oblivious to his horror says, "Yeah, I'm just going to the bakery". Frederic says "But, that's not nice for the baker man...".
Say what you like, this book did change my life. I am now much more aware of how I am dressed when I go out, even if I am only getting the newspaper. I even went out and bought a new coat! I swear, I will never again wear sweatpants going to the store. Pants I thought were quite cute earlier are now in the pile "not to be found dead in".
Read the book, have a laugh. I read it in 50 page gulps; it is funny and quite educational when it comes to French etiquette.Almost French: Love and a New Life In Paris Overview

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Gault Millau Hotel and Restaurant Guide to France, 2009 French Language Edition) (French Edition) Review

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Gault Millau Hotel and Restaurant Guide to France, 2009 French Language Edition) (French Edition) ReviewThe Gault Millau Guide to France is, without doubt, the best and most comprehensive guide of its type. But beware: You must buy the French-language edition. English-language versions of Gault Millau are simplified and dumbed-down (for the American audience, alas), and will not begin to give you the sheer volume of information that is found in the French-language edition. Written in sometimes idiomatic French, which may slow down the anglophone reader, but well worth the effort. The only negative is the price, which is stratospheric. (But weigh that against what you would gladly pay for a good Hermitage!)Gault Millau Hotel and Restaurant Guide to France, 2009 French Language Edition) (French Edition) Overview

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French a la Mode;: The Right Things to Say and Do in France Review

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French a la Mode;: The Right Things to Say and Do in France ReviewThe most comprehensive linguistic aid to travelers that I have ever seen. It offers advice that is both useful and amusing. And to be benefited by it only a slight remnant of grammar-school French is necessary.French a la Mode;: The Right Things to Say and Do in France Overview

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A Frequency Dictionary of French: Core Vocabulary for Learners (Routledge Frequency Dictionaries) Review

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A Frequency Dictionary of French: Core Vocabulary for Learners (Routledge Frequency Dictionaries) ReviewThis book is a gem. Anyone learning French, particularly those interested in written French, will appreciate this tool. This frequency dictionary allows the learner to quickly gain a casual familiarity with the most frequently used French words. The presentation is exemplary in every respect - definitions and sample sentences are excellent.A Frequency Dictionary of French: Core Vocabulary for Learners (Routledge Frequency Dictionaries) OverviewA Frequency Dictionary of French is an invaluable tool for all learners of French, providing a list of the 5000 most frequently used words in the language. Based on a 23-million-word corpus of French which includes written and spoken material both from France and overseas, this dictionary provides the user with detailed information for each of the 5000 entries, including English equivalents, a sample sentence, its English translation, usage statistics, and an indication of register variation. Users can access the top 5000 words either through the main frequency listing or through an alphabetical index. Throughout the frequency listing there are thematically-organized lists of the top words from a variety of key topics such as sports, weather, clothing, and family terms.An engaging and highly useful resource, the Frequency Dictionary of French will enable students of all levels to get the most out of their study of French vocabulary.Deryle Lonsdale is Associate Professor in the Linguistics and English Language Department at Brigham Young University (Provo, Utah). Yvon Le Bras is Associate Professor of French and Department Chair of the French and Italian Department at Brigham Young University (Provo, Utah).

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