History Books

A stunning story of a man who survived the horrors of concentration camps. He is a psychiatrist and developed his own theories and method of therapy called logotherapy. The book covers his experience in a concentration camp and the second half of the book explains his philosophy of logotherapy. Frankl says that the meaning of life is found in every moment of living; life never ceases to have meaning, even in suffering and death. He encourages his patients and readers to live a full life by looking to the future rather than reliving the past.

Quotation: "Self-transcendence of human existence: Being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself - be it a meaning to fulfil or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself - by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love - the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself..."

Excellent read. Highly Recommended.

Just in case, if one wants to ascertain the level of endurance human beings possess, he needs to go no further than read through the experiences at concentration camps as recalled by a survivor - Viktor Frankl - in this book.

And considering that a will to survive does not manifest only in situations where life is at stake, physically, but at various stages in life, where even smallest of problems can seem mammoth and wreck havoc in making life miserable at psychological level, the lessons contained in this book have vast practical applications, when it comes to understanding our survival instinct.

The basic principle which differentiates a survivor from a loser is well highlighted by the following quote, which is often cited by the author in the book - 'The one who has a why to live can bear almost any how.'

I would highly recommend this book and would suggest re-reading it a few times because it would better enable on to grasp and internalize the importance of the subject addressed in this book and appreciate the viewpoint of the author.

I first read this book in college many years ago as I was working on my degree in psychology. An excerpt from it is in John McCain's autobiographical book, Faith of My Fathers: A Family Memoir. I was glad to be reminded of this book which I had not read in years. I found my old copy on the shelf but I am also glad to learn it is still available.

The comparison between Frankl and McCain as prisoners is striking. Both of them emphasize the basic human need for meaning and purpose. Both share incredible horrors of prison camp as well as the human ability to look beyond present circumstances, to keep the horrid memories from continuing as sources of torture years after the actual experiences.
We can apply this ability to many of the unfortunate experiences in our lives. It is not only an attitude of forgive and forget, it is the need to keep the horrors or smaller angers from continuing to torment us.

It is more than a little frightening that there are people who deny that the Holocaust even happened. I hope you read Frankl's book. Fully grasp the reality of his day and apply it to today's needs and problems.

This is a wonderful book to read merely because of it's main message. Read it and find out the meaning of the title.

I bought this book because I was searching for yet another book on workplace bullying and another book came up in my search based on Frankl's book. I read the customer reviews on that book and one reviewer said something to the effect of, "If you want to read a book based on Viktor Frankl's opinion of how to get along at a bad work environment (like a Nazi death camp), why don't you just read Frankl's book?" So, that's where I started. I read it. Twice. Then I got out my computer and typed in passages that had meaning to me so I could re-read them during difficult times. I compressed the entire book down to about 10 pages, single spaced. I must admit that I consider myself a negative, often depressed sort of person, mostly because my work situation is so demoralizing. I was amazed by Frankl's coping mechanisms on how to get along in a difficult situation; every day meant multiple incidents of having to choose the correct path to avoid death or worse, making the choice to give up on your own life (suicide). He went through 5 years of that and lived to tell about it. It is a must read for everyone, particularly when you are having the hardest time of your life. I could tell that if I had read it as a college student, it wouldn't have the same meaning as now, when I am 50 and have had many ups and downs. I see everything at such a deeper level and appreciated this book so much more than I would have if I were younger. Briefly, the lessons in the book written 50 years ago still apply today. Here they are: Let luck be your guide. It's not what you know, it's who you know. Network with the equivalent of a one-step-up lateral (not your own) middle manager and they will help you when they can. Schmooze. Be kind to others. Don't complain, it doesn't help. You can't fix, deal with or appeal to a sadist, so don't try. Avoid sadists at all costs. Keep your mouth shut unless asked for your opinion and then be short and to the point. Praise, even when praise isn't deserved. Keep criticisms to yourself. Be inconspicuous. Work hard for the sake of doing a good job. Fantasize for escape. Everything can be taken away from you except for your past, so relish in it. When something good happens to you, write it down (keep a gratitude journal). Don't do anything that compromises your own values so you won't have regrets. Be careful who you abuse today because tomorrow they may be your master. You are not your job, your title or your position. You are a unique person loved by others. The only thing in life that really matters is the people you love and the people who love and need you. Love shared is eternal. Treat everyone with respect. The meaning of life is not what life can do for you, but what life expects of you; how you make the world a better place with your presence. The purpose of life is not happiness. The purpose of life is discovering what you can contribute to it. Save a slice of bread (or whatever is the only material thing that matters to you when there is nothing left) for later when you are really depressed and it's the only thing left that can get you through that difficult moment. (For me it's chocolate and a dark beer at the same time.) Apathy is the signaling of the beginning of the end of one's life. Everyone that you respect and look up to has human failings. Even tough guys cry. Suffering without purpose is meaningless. The larger the suffering, the bigger the lesson. There's lots more in the book for you to discover and it's an easy read.

Much of the book is quite interesting, in that it fills out the character of Rhett Butler. In GWTW, the book and movie, he appears and disappears without our knowing from whence and to where. With this book, we learn about the events that shaped his character--from the beatings by his cruel father to his association and partnership with Belle Watling. We also learned the Margaret Mitchell estate approved version of what happened after the last page of the novel GWTW.

Also good is the depiction of the ante-bellum South, especially Charleston, where secession was born. There is a myth about that era, propagated by post-bellum, 2nd generation Southerners. Only a small percentage of the whites lived on comfortable plantations, worked by happy slaves. A London newspaperman traveled through the South just before the war and was amazed to find that so many white illiterates, so much chewing tobacco on the sidewalks. Still, there were the Taras so GWTW was not entirely inaccurate. The present book continues that myth but fleshes out the other reality a bit.

However, when this book attempts to describe military actions, it is woefully inaccurate. One example: Morgan's Ohio raid of July 1863 is a mess in this book. Gen. John Hunt Morgan is replaced by a fictional colonel, who looks at "Pommery, Ohio," rather than Pomeroy, Ohio, in Meigs County, on the Ohio River. Morgan's raiders tried to cross the river near there, and some made it into West Virginia, which was scarcely safe Confederate territory at the time. The rest of Morgan's men were forced eastward and were captured near East Liverpool. The prisoners did not go to prison in Illinois, as is suggested in this book, but were sent to Camp Chase, Johnson's Island and the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus. Morgan escaped from the latter site. I can't imagine why the author decided to change history so drastically, when the real story could have served his purpose just as well. The author's postscript explanation does not adequately explain or justify the rearrangements in his novel.

There is also confusion with respect to the sequence of when military events took place. The Ohio raid followed closely upon Gettysburg, in July, and yet the southerners shivered in the cold. In another place, southerners cross the Potomac River into Pennsylvania. What happened to Maryland? In another case a train leaves Georgia, enters Mississippi, then proceeds into Alabama. Another case: Maj. Ashley Wilkes was all over the place in the war, in the Army of Northern Virginia, in the Army of Tennessee, and in raids into Kentucky. In the Mitchell book he is with Gen. Gordon, strictly in Lee's army.

It is hard to overlook these alterations of history or errors and maintain a sense of reality in reading this. Margaret Mitchell was far more careful in mentioned battles and in adhering to accurate timelines.

It is unfortunate that the author of Rhett Butler's People let his book be marred by errors that any student of the Civil War will see--amd regret.

I recently purchased and read this book. Based on the reviews that I had read, I thought I wasn't going to enjoy the book. I am so glad that I was wrong. Are there flaws with the book? Absolutely, the main one being the way Melly is protrayed. However, with all of the flaws, it is still an amzing read! If you didn't like the way Alexandra Ripley continued the story, you should really get satisfaction from this book. Congratulations Mr. McCaig on a job well done!!

As someone who works with creative teams and has seen the results when creation by committee goes horribly awry, I wondered as I read through the first part of this book if the Margaret Mitchell estate had meddled in the writing. The story was so incoherent and the characters so empty, it was if the author wasn't really inhabiting his work. I read online this is apparently true, with estate lawyers providing guidance of all things! My sympathy to the author! In most of this book we have very little insight into the inner world of Rhett Butler, to me the most intriguing character of the original -- we see what he goes through as a young man but we have little idea of the person developing inside as a result. The plot comes from the war instead of characters. There were some clever interpretations of back stories hinted at in the original book (did Rhett and Belle have a son together?). The new characters were not terribly interesting but mostly in reaction to something around them -- in the original the characters are iconic and colorful, standing for key values and Southern viewpoints. The last few chapters hone in finally on the original characters (with Rhett's sister added) to retell the post-war story, thankfully departing from the terrible 'Scarlett Goes To Ireland' sequel by Ripley. The last chapters were more interesting and satisfying. But would Scarlett really allow herself to go down into poverty and be satisfied with field hand status waiting for Rhett? Not from everything said about her before. She would have been searching for the next opportunity to care for her family beyond poverty. I think it was a man's fantasy that even Scarlett O'Hara would keep herself in poverty so Rhett would come save her at the end.

Hmmm....What can I say about this read? Though I have read and love GWTW, I don't feel that I am a purest about the original. I have also read the first sequel, Scarlett, and enjoyed it for the most part. Rhett Butler's People just lacked depth. The characters that I have learned to love where shallow, and unbelievable. The premise of the book could have been great, describing Rhett Butler's past and views on the whole GWTW saga. However, I felt that the writing was simply NOT good. Don't buy this one, go to the library.

McCaig is a virtuoso of the written word. I have no idea how any true fan of the original GWTW can give it less than 5 stars. McCaig has taken our favorite scoundrel, lover and hero and made him BETTER! He's still all that he ever was, but you are allowed to see the thoughts behind the action. And what glorious thoughts!

Each page screams loving dedication and hours of research. I have studied the Civil War extensively, have a library of over 100 books on the subject, have sojourned in its many battlefields contemplating the destruction, waste and tragedy of mankind. But somehow McCaig has made it easier to understand.

Do not hesitate to buy this one. I just can't believe I waited this long to read it.

I am 100% satisfied with my purchase. It's a remarkable 1st person character study of a man who crept in the back door to become the Emperor of Rome.

If you like your history lite then I, Claudius is your book. Written as an autobiography of the life of Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus, who became Emperor of Rome in 41 A.D., I, Claudius is actually historical fiction. As such, there seems to be no way to measure the accuracy of the accounts given in this first part of Graves's two-part series.

Nevertheless, I, Claudius is interesting - it reads like a novel - and reveals the sordid details of the lives and times of the Royal family from Augustus until the time when Claudius ascended to the throne.

I hate to be the one bad apple in the bunch, but to be honest, I was expecting great things from this book given all of the fabulous reviews. Perhaps because I've been pampered with books like Philippa Greggory's THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL or THE RED TENT, I expected a read that would be quick, with snappy dialogue and luscious settings. What I got instead was something that felt very much dated, and very boring. Of course, this is just my opinion, and I see that many others here have different ones. But for fans of Greggory-style writing, I would give this a pass.

There's not much I can say here or desire to say here that hasn't been covered by the other reviewers. Just to reiterate though: The character of Livia, as presented here in Graves's novel, is NOT based on any sound scholarship, new or otherwise. It's true that she COULD have poisoned her way to power as depicted here. But bear in mind that Claudius himself COULD have just as well done so himself, with this first person narration serving as a cover up. - Be it remembered that Claudius (the actual emperor) did write an actual first person Autobiography, now lost to us. - Who knows what ulterior motives he might have harboured in doing so? In any event, altogether too many untimely deaths of all sorts pile up to attribute to any one person. It also seems clear to me that Graves, in describing the Germans, was certainly drawing a parallel to the Germans he fought against in WWI.

But, laying historical accuracy to one side, this is a clever and interesting read. It is not, to my mind, the masterpiece some reviewers here make it out to be. But I enjoyed it. The impression one has on closing the book and reflecting on the murders, mayhem and madness that occur on almost every page leaves one feeling about the book as Claudius felt about the last, ebrious conversation he had with Livia:

"The conversation was like the sort one has in dreams - mad but interesting."

"I Claudius" was the first book that convinced me that history could be engrossing. Ridiculously fun to read - it delivers a thrill on a level with the first time you saw "The Mikado", heard the Saint-Saens cello concerto, Callas singing 'Casta Diva'. You get the picture.

It is a stroke of genius for Graves to choose Claudius, the drooling 'halfwit' among the Caesars, overlooked and ridiculed by his more ambitious relatives, as his mouthpiece. In a voice that is irresistibly gossipy and remarkably shrewd, he draws us in and makes the history completely and spellbindingly real. It's a stunning accomplishment.

This book, its sequel, and the extraordinary BBC adaptation for television, are high on the list of life's great pleasures.

This coffee table book is one of my favorites. It doesn't go in depth into the subject matter but rather grazes over real-world examples with diagrams and simple explanations. Fun book to read, but not for the serious of study.

Want to be better or the best at what you do? This is the kind of book you use to fuel inspiration at a foundational level.

It was very fast to get the product and I experience a very good seller!

I bought this book primarily to see the studies of proportions in architecture. There are very few examples (really only 4 pages dedicated to that subject and 3 buildings analyzed) shown here. It does, however, give a myriad of ways to lay out different proportions using rectangles, circles, triangles, pentagons, etc. These, along with the examples of proportion in nature and on the human body were enough to spark my imagination as to how proportion can be used in design of buildings, but if you are looking for broad analysis of architectural proportions, look elsewhere. The examples that are given are mainly of poster design in the 1900s and Modern furniture design.

Kim Elam's book is not only a fascinating read, but beautifully designed as well, making it a perfect example of its subject. A must for all artists and designers.

I've read other works by Ehrman and this book is Ehrman at his finest. He takes the reader step-by-step through the Bible and shows how each author or set of authors explains the existence of human suffering.

In the personal sections of the book, Ehrman talks about the reasons for his own doubts about the existence of God. But, contrary to some of the other reviews, Ehrman NEVER makes the narcissistic argument: "Why does God allow ME to suffer?". He takes a much bigger look at the problem and asks, "Do we live in a reality that appears to have been designed by God?" "Did God create certain mosquitoes to be the perfect host for the malaria virus so that it could kills millions upon millions of his children?"

Side note:
I'm befuddled by other reviews that assert that the Bible never tries to explain the reason for suffering. Explanations abound in the Bible. The prophets tell Israel very plainly why Israel is suffering. The New Testament epistle writers explicitly tell their flocks why they are suffering. Job's friends tell him why he is suffering. YHWH gives perfectly clear explanations about why he decides to inflict suffering.

First I'll say that I am an atheist and came to atheism because of suffering and the lack of answers and intervention provided by any god. I agree with the author's points, though I go a step further into atheism.

That being said, I found the first 70% of the book difficult to read. For one thing, way too much scripture for me. I put down the bible (which I've read in entirety at least four times) 17 years ago because it was too violent, weird and irrational (among other things). I skimmed through the scriptures in this book because frankly I didn't need them to see the point. I felt that the different categories of suffering could have been explained more succintly.

I did quite enjoy the last 1/3 of the book. The idea that everyone always thinks the end times are their times is a very compelling bible debunker. My parents are Jehovah's Witnesses and are absolutely convinced Armeggedon is nigh, it makes no sense but they are "certain". I also appreciate the point about religious certitude allowing people to just not deal with the suffering on the planet (the world is evil, god will take care of it so we don't need to). Hopefully our species will evolve to a point where we are accountable to each other and the planet instead of using the skygod will save us cop-out.

Overall, the book is a slightly above average bible debunker and reminded me of my long standing belief that many of the bibl'e authors were quite mentally ill.

In a very thoughtful book, Bart Ehrman wrestles with the question of theodicy (how there can be suffering in a world created by a perfect God). He comes to the conclusion--I think a correct one-- that the Bible and Christianity offers no solution to this quandary. Nor is he satisfied with the answers he has been given--mostly cliches about "free will" or vague non-answers like "Who are we to question God." Like Ehrman, I lost my faith because I could not reconcile suffering with an all-loving God. I highly recommend this book to believers and atheists alike.

It seems that many people who have written negative reviews have never actually read the book. Many of the proposals for explanations of suffering that are expounded in the reviews are ones that Dr. Ehrman examines in the book (often at some length). What seems to be missing from these reviews is that Ehrman is making a case for his own viewpoint, examining ideas that have been proposed to explain suffering, and then explaining why he does not find them satisfying or convincing. At no point does he say that you cannot find the explanations satisfactory (e.g., the "need for free will" hypothesis), but he does explain why he himself does not think the explanation is adequate. Agree with Dr. Ehrman or not, you cannot argue with the intellectual effort and personal honesty. Dr. Ehrman writes very well, and in a highly engaging style with subtle humor and a fine flow of ideas. The chapter on the Book of Job is alone worth the price of the book.

This book is an easy read, and as a former Christian I connected with the author's use of biblical quotes to make his point. This book will probably not play well to an audience of unbelievers because it depends heavily on the Christian tradition to make his arguments. It does, however, do very well at arguing why the answers to human suffering in the bible are insulting at best and monsterous at worst and this book should be read by all those who call themselves Christian believers. Why don't believers hold god to the standard of being better than his creation? Why do humans seem to have more compassion when they work to aleviate human suffering (treating disease, helping victims of natural disasters),whereas god doesn't put an end to suffering such as disease when he supposedly can? Mr. Ehrman is singing to the choir in my case, because I came to the same conclusion as his long ago.

If you want to see why biblical arguments for suffering do not make sense and postulate a god that causes, ignores, and manipulates human suffering then this is the book for you.

This book is instructive by way of example. It has not a lot of text but many interesting photographs in categories. The categories reflect the photographic or artistic value of the chapter.

Once it's not a deep study about B&W pictures - only an abridge of a few very known photos - it is very smart to have in your photography' shelf(ves), but not A MUST to have it.
Definely it's a very good work material for professionals/teachers because there is no explanations why the picture became famous, so, beginners just will fall in love about them by intuition, leaving the technical aspects to be explained/understood later.
Could be 4 stars if it'd more pictures.

I like collections of photos by many different artists, and this book has a good number of diverse pre-1970 photos to browse. There is a minimum of text and that is fine with me. The book's main contribution is that it suggests a means of systematizing photography, by frame, subject, time, details and other aspects, and as such provides a compelling jumping off point from which the aspiring photographer can learn the art of photography. Good value for the money as well.

I was expecting a book of photographs with accompanying essays on their artistic merit. According to the write up and the first review. I received the book only to find its a collection of mainly classic photographs but mainly well-known photographers, with virtaually no notes, this was quite disappointing. I might also add there are better compilation type photography books on the market.

This book is a collection of photographs from the MOMA collection, nothing more. For those (like me) who were expecting insights, comments, knowledge, this is not the book. It's dissapointing.

I thought that I knew alot about the Navy SEALS and their training, but boy was I wrong. Dick Couch did a great job at taking us from day one at Indoc of 114 gung-ho soldiers, down to the last remaining 20 that actually made it through and were secured by the BUD/S staff. This was a quick read, mostly because i refused to put it down. I felt like I was in there with the soldiers, sweating and painfully progressing through grinder PT, the O-course, Hellweek, tests, and evolutions. If you are even remotely thinking of trying out for SEAL training, than this is definately required reading. Although, even if your not, its still a great book if your interested in reading about what some of our elite soldiers must go through everyday just to call themselves "elite". Hollywood has it all wrong, and you'll quickly see that after just reading a few chapters. This will definately be remembered as one of my favorite books. Great work!

I bought this book after reading Marcus Luttrell's "Lone Survivor". Dick Couch does a very good job of describing what it takes to become a SEAL. There's just enough character developmentbehind the scenes to make you feel like you know some of the candidates going through the process. Couch's book was good enough that I purchases 2 other titles by him after reading this. This book is worth your time.

You are probably looking at this book because you are interested in Navy SEALs like myself. If you are interested in SEALs then you won't be disapointed in this book. I decided to pick this book up and was I impressed. The whole time the author was telling the story I felt like I was actually there with the class. It's a quick read but not in a disappointing way.

Terrific book. If you are interested in "things" that are military you will enjoy this work. The book takes you right into the action of what it is like to train to become a Navy Seal and it is very hard to put down.

Dick Couch does an outstanding job describing the experiences of BUD/S Class 228 throughout their training evolutions. You get a true understanding of what it takes to become a Navy SEAL.

Bhabha writes dense, pretentious prose, which is commonplace now among the humanists who feel inferior to scientists, but he does have something to say. This little book does two things: it is in the end a celebration of literature (and not of theory for its own sake) and it defends the little brown people, such as Indians, against the claim of others, such as Edward Said, that whites oppressed them by denying them a voice. Bhabha argues in effect that the oppression created a new voice that subverted the oppressors. Bhabha has little patience for the sob-sister school of academic discourse which seeks out victims of racism. This is a sustained critique of liberal academic bad faith.

In The Location of Culture, Bhabha argues for a fundamental realignment of the methodology of cultural analysis away from ontology toward the "performative" and "enunciatory present" (p.178). Such a shift, he claims, provides a basis for the negotiation of cultural difference rather than its automatic repression or negation in the face of irreconcilable oppositions. Bhabha's emphasis on the enunciative production of meaning places the emphasis of critical inquiry on issues of representation or signification, thereby producing "a temporality that makes it possible to conceive of the articulation of antagonistic or contradictory elements" (p.25).

This argument represents a critical attack on the Western production of binary oppositions, traditionally defined in terms of centre and margin, civilised and savage, enlightened and ignorant. Bhabha questions the easy recourse to consolidated dualisms by repudiating fixed and authentic centres of truth, suggesting that cultures interact, transgress and transform each other in a much more complex manner than typical binary oppositions allow.

According to him, hybridity and linguistic multivocality have the potential to intervene and dislocate the process of domination through the re-interpretation and re-deployment of received discourse, thus re-focusing critical attention towards the "agonistic space" (181) which exists on the borders of difference, along the edges of alterity, where cultures meet. Bhabha celebrates cultural heterogeneity and the subversive effects of hybridisation.

Ambivalence is a key term in Bhabha's Location of Culture. Accordingly, Bhabha's prose might be considered poetry or gibberish, but certainly not scholarship. There is no thesis, no argument, no evidence. That is not to say that Bhabha wouldn't be capable of such writing. Every once in a while, the reader can catch a glimpse of Bhabha's Other: the lucid thinker of post-colonialism. In order to compensate for the lack of clarity, structure and, yes, basic congruity between subjects, verbs and objects, Bhabha enacts the thoughts he fails to express. Indeed, his text is a performance of itself. Take, for instance, his chapter on mimicry. Whatever intelligent thoughts other scholars have derived from this concept, you will not find them in Bhabha's book. But he indeed shows you what he means, as he goes through the motions of scholarship. First, he makes a number of general statements that sound like a thesis. Then he puts a in a few convoluted sentence structures that make no sense-grammatically or otherwise. And finally he slams in a quote or two to prove a point-what point doesn't matter, for he did not make one in the first place. As a reader you will have to decide whether his work is a mimicry (in his definition "almost but not quite") of scholarship or its menace (according to Bhabha, 'not at all but still a little'). About one thing, though, he leaves no ambivalence: he "quite simply mocks its power to be a model." Harvard volunteered to be the evidence.

I enjoy the central insights of The Location of Culture. As the one previous reviewer put it, this idea of in-betweenness is indeed one of Bhabha's central and defining claims. Moreover, the fact that this space of in-between--"located" in the "interstices" of colonial discourse itself, as well as the interstices "between" colonial and anti-colonial discourse--is both oppressive and liberating is one of the beauties of the argument. These various spaces of in-between serve as constant challenges to the attempts of the empowered to render their power and perspective natural, internally consistent and homogeneous. The self-contradictory aspects of this attempt to paper over actual and ever-present hybridity becomes a source of agency. In other words, life is actually always lived in-between but our conceptualization tends to resists this complexity. In-betweenness being both a source of oppression and of power does not leave us "nowhere." Rather, it places us in the conceptual flux that cultural discourses and practices and rituals often seek to hide. Actively inhabiting that conceptual flux rather than actively trying to project onto a disempowered other is indeed a tremendous act of resistance. I find Bhabha's claim to be fascinating and even beautiful.

Of course, I agree that there are ways in which Bhabha could have defined this resistance more efficiently, and I do think he relies on psychoanalytic modes of analysis a little too much. And my biggest problem with his argumenr is that it tends to emphasize the empowered discourse over the practices and subjectivities of the disempowered as they resist. In other words, there is more critique than affirmation, more identification of how this in-betweenness is a consequence of power and not enough explanation of how to inhabit it as a mode of resistance.

Nonetheless, the resistance to "theoryspeak" by which one reviewer objected to this book is often a bigger problem to understanding Bhabha than the 'theoryspeak' itself. I am no fan of such use of language that is sometimes seemingly at the expense of clarity but the problem is neither the language itself nor a non-white person adapting Western theory. After all, if Bhabha is invested in "in-betweenness," and in a strange way he is, then his use of Western theory merely confirms the possibility he sees in breaking down the false "othering" that maintains colonial power. His canonization has as much to do with non-white academics as white ones. More importantly, the idea that an Indian writer has no legitimate access to Western theory becomes part and parcel of the idea that people of color are absolute others from white Europeans. As much as the racists and the ethnic cultural nationalists both want this point to be true, it is not. Finally, what makes Bhabha's work of any value at all--and I think it is quite valuable--is that he grasps and elaborates upon the INSIGHTS of Western theory, not just its vocabulary and legitimacy. Uniting definitions of unconscious desire from Freud and Lacan with theories of how power inhabits language (discourse) from Derrida and Foucault allows for very sophisticated critiques. He takes the implications of Derrida, Foucault, Lacan and others and creatively imagines how imperial cultures operate in a way that provides terms for critique and resistance. While that approach can be alienating, its INSIGHTS, for the most part, compensate for the difficulties of its vocabulary. It is well worth the effort.

The fact that this book is influential is generally beyond argument. What astonishes me, however, is that so many people had the endurance to sit through the horrific writing; the author's style is obnoxious in the extreme. The first paragraph, for example, notes that the question of culture is the "trope of our times," characterized by "a tenebrous sense of survival." These concepts are not mind-bending. An everday, or as Homi would say, "colloquial" vocabularly would sufficiently articulate his thesis, yet he seems hellbent on packing his work with obscure language like he needs show off or prove something. Again, his ideas are influential, but he makes reading them as painful as possible.

The author of this book is not an environmental determinist, but he makes a plea for us to observe weather as best we can, not only in our time, but in history, and study its interplay with human social, political, artistic, and military activity. He speaks of ice cores, tree rings, contemporary chronicles, and even paintings as ways to recover information about the weather of the past, and his focus is of course the cold years in Europe between 1300 and 1850. The book is filled with vital details; it is filled with precisely stated and very readable observations about what weather has meant to people, what it might mean to us, and it urges us to be more conscious of what is happening with weather today. I found it extremely inviting and thought provoking, and highly recommend it to anyone interested in European history and art. There is tremendous scope here. Anyone interested in Global Warming ought certainly to read the book, too. Quite a pleasure. Quite a terrific book.

Superbly done. The book really hammers out the crucial points of how dramatic historical events were somehow related to violent climate shifts that lasted over 500 years.
The book examines origins of these violent climate shifts, discusses life during the middle ages and talks about intriguing topics of world events shaped by global climate. Such famous events are the French Revolution, Bubonic Plague of the 1300's, Potato Irish Famine, JamesTown to name just a few.
The Arthur is very to the point and uses excellent statistics and data to back things up.
Truly an epic book that will completely change your outlook on history forever.
Its only 200 pages and can be finished in a weekend. Get it and enjoy.

The book was in better condition than expected and arrived sooner than expected, Thank you.

This book is a social history of Western Europe and other areas from c.1500-1900. It describes how volcanos, sunspots, ocean currents and other natural phenomena unknown or unappreciated by these people affected their lives. It's an easy read full of anecdotes with a dose of science and the many methods scientists use to determine climate so long ago.
It's politically neutral and emphasizes the complex processes involved but it's essentially a social history of a period where Winters and Summers were highly variable without much human influence. A great read for an easy understanding of some of the complexities behind the "climate debate".

Interesting with several unique approaches. The problem for me rests with his intricate explanations of causes of climate changes from North Atlantic Oscillation,Sun spots,solar flares, ocean currents, polar melting, volcanoes. methane release, and a host of other causes. Yet,he speaks in unsubstantated conviction that todays warming is due to mans fossil fuel use. Then he concludes with "The Little Ice Age reminds us that climate change is inevitable, unpredictable, and sometimes vicious.I would ask him does he believe this is really caused by man?

One thing Ebert shares with his subject is burning passion. Ebert has reviewed films for over 40 years while Scorsese has made films for that long. What has sustained them is a passionate love of movies. Ebert called it from the beginning and Scorsese fulfilled his early promise. From Mean Streets to Taxi Driver, from Raging Bull to Goodfellas, From Casino to The Aviator - Scorsese has forged brilliant cinema that will be an integral part of the foundation of 21st century film (in which he continues to participate himself).

This book is a testament to the skill of both of these avid film fans and shows that Roger Ebert is still a necessary man with much work yet to do.