Westerns Books

My son loves these books. They keep him reading and that's my purpose in buying them

Find out how we will achieve peace through war and continual conflict. This is an important, though troubling work of political philosophy by the great thinker, though it is mediocre when compared to the historical dialectics of Hegel. For evidence of Kant's racism/ethnocentrism, read the section on Cosmopolitanism, in which Kant effectively excludes all humans outside of the Ancient Greece and the West from the human project. Well, one can't assume a great transcendental thinker will also be enlightened in politics; sad considering the "Enlightenment" is one of Kant's primary concerns in the book.

It is very useful to have a Kant's shorter essays on political philosophy and the philosophy of history collected in a single volume. While a larger, more comprehensive collection, edited by Hans Reiss, is published by Cambridge Univ. Press under the title *Kant: Political Writings*, this smaller Hackett version is nicely translated and much more affordable. Hackett Publ. Co. in general has been very kind to philosophy. They deserve your patronage.

I have to admit that I read the Cliff Notes after I read the book twice and saw all three movies. However, the notes are still helped with understanding points that were not previously stresses. Knowing more about the Author helps in see why he chose the perspective. Keep in mind that any conclusions drawn in the notes are those of Sudan Van Kirk. After reading this supplement you may want to re read the book. The notes include:

. Life and Background of the Author
. Genera; Plot summary

. Remarque's Introductory Note
. Critical Commentaries
. Remarque's Style
. Remarque as a Social Critic
. Character Analyses
. Questions for Review

"He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the western Front."

I wish I'd found this little volume before embarking on an attempt to digest Foucault's major works whole - it might have saved considerable frustration. Don't expect a categorical analysis of any of them from Gutting's survey, that's not what this is for. Do expect a more distant perspective from which the forest is no longer obscured by the trees.

Neither is this a Cliff Notes version of Foucault's work - if you haven't taken the trouble to place that within a larger philosophical context the book likely won't be of much use to you. For what it is, however, it succeeds brilliantly within the few pages allotted, and Gutting has performed a minor miracle of concision and clarification. Given the occasional verbosity of Foucault and the more than occasional turbidity of his works, that's worth the purchase price alone.

Gary Gutting's brief survey of the thought of Michel Foucault is not merely one of the best books in Oxford UP's Very Short Introductions series, but one of the clearest, most insightful pieces on Foucault that I've read. I haven't read much Foucault since working my way through most of his books in the late eighties. To prepare for a re-reading of those books I decided to read this book as a refresher/quick overview. Most of the secondary works on Foucault that I read back when where usually borderline impenetrable. Although Foucault is infinitely more lucid than many other French writers -- there is a world of difference between, for instance, Baudrillard and Foucault -- he is unfortunately too prone to linguistic obfuscation. Too many of Foucault's would-be disciples attempt to write in a prose style that is as opaque as anyone on the Left Bank. Gutting is in contrast a model of clarity. He writes insightfully about Foucault while making the analysis no more difficult than it needs to be.

The chapters of the book are constructed around discussions of Foucault's major works. They are thematic to the degree that those books dealt with specific ideas or subjects. In every case Gutting does a marvelous job of establishing the context of these works, how they depart from traditional discussions, how they provided innovative new ways of understanding our world, and what some of the more problematic aspects of the works are. Gutting clearly (and justifiably) believes that Foucault made some very important contributions that enable us to understand how problematic many of our unexamined assumptions about society are, but at the same time refuses to be a blind disciple. There are shortcomings to Foucault's work as well as some misconceptions. Gutting is as willing to acknowledge the former as he is to battle the latter.

I strongly recommend this to anyone wanting to read Foucault for the first time, as well as anyone (like myself) who haven't read him in a while but would like a refresher. To be frank, I believe I would have made better use of my reading of Foucault had I had an introduction this clear and insightful when I was reading him in the late eighties.

Written in an easy-read, yet perfectly scholarly manner, Foucault: A Very Short Introduction is a great jumping-off point for the student or interested scholar of literary, cultural, and/or political theory. While brief (as promised) and cursory, it nevertheless goes to the heart of much of Foucault's work as it has influenced that of other modern thinkers. An enjoyable read that will no doubt point in many directions for further study. Contains a good bibliography as well.

I could not put this book down. I ordered it in a time where polygamy was all over the news. A ranch down in Texas was raided & 400+ children taken out of there, with only 100+ mothers. I thought this book really gave you a great idea of what it was like to live believing in this horrible religion of FDLS. It is sickening. I found it to be horrifying that young boys are tossed out of the community as to not be "competition" with the old men for the child bearing women!! I can't even believe there are people in the world that would believe this type of thing, but this book really gave me an understaing first hand of what it really is like. As a woman, you are basically stuck, you have no rights of your own, your children can be taken from you & raised as someone else's & you can be given to another husband if someone else sees fit. The "first wife" keeps track of the "sister wives" menstrual cycles, as to know when to let them sleep with her husband to produce as many children as they can. Children are abused, as are sister wives most times. Sometimes only the MAIN family eat well, dress well, etc, depending on the views of the husband. The sister wives & children eat scraps & ketchup sandwiches & wear rags, sewn together, while the first wife & their children together eat like royalty & wear new clothes. All to get a good spot in Heaven. I love this book, it is a bizarre religion, so I was in AWE alot, but it is a great inside view of their life. I read this book in 3 days flat. It was wonderful!

First of all, this was a great book! Somewhere in the middle of the book, I went from feeling very sorry for these women, to actually being sort of mad at some of them. Some of these same women contined to find yet another Polygamy family even after leaving a horrible one.
I feel mostly sorry for the children :(
Great book otherwise !!

While this book is worth reading, it is not about Warren Jeffs as anyone might expect from the title. While it does tell about the women in polygamy the dialog in most of these stories reads like that in a harlequin novel. Since I was expecting to learn about the life of Warren Jeffs I was disappointed.

Dear Professor Western:

I LOVED YOUR BOOK. My teacher says it was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
I have read a lot of books on polygamy, but I liked yours the best of all because it talks about all kinds of polygamous groups in America. It really is a different "world". I intend to do my research paper on your study. I was sorry to hear that some polygamous people are giving you a hard time for telling the truth. I THINK THE MEDIA AND EVERYBODY SHOULD READ THIS BOOK BECAUSE IT SO DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHER 'ESCAPE' TYPE BOOKS. It explains why polygamist men behave like they do, and all their different doctrines--fascinating. Keep up the good work, I learned a lot. - Thanks Rick.

Elizabeth Lowell has done an outstanding job in this book. The tension and excitment on the openning lines of the story is only better if you get the audio cassette. The heroine is rooting for the wounded man to outrun, and out smart his attackers. Jenna the heroine is strong,resourceful, and beautiful. She knows how to live on the land in the west with indians a constant danger. She rescues a man who is a warrior in strength and has rugged good looks, but he doesn't know what a gem he has found in Miss Wayland. The danger of taking gold out of indian country proves near fatal for them both and there is more... the constant sexual tension just underscores the gentle love story of a girl-woman who has the dream of being the hero's "silken lady" is so touching. Looking for a western love story this is your book. It only gets better in the audio version. You can feel the tension and excitment so easily in the unabridged audio version. It is superbly done by the actors. This is a keeper.

Other books by Lowell are wonderful, but this was not. I could not even finish it. Sorry.

Not as great an introduction to the MacKenzie-Blackthorn saga as I had hoped. Books 2,3,4and 5 were much better and remain among my favorites.

Lowell can definitely write a stroy. I just wish the hero had not been such an abusive hunk. He gets saved from certain death, seduces, then abuses the heroine. She should have socked him in the chops and found someone who appreciated her.

Orphaned when she was just 14, Janna Wayland has spent the last five years of her life living alone in the wilds of Utah Territory, with only the wild mustang horses for company. That solitude is shattered, though, the day she watches Tyrell MacKenzie escape from a band of Indian renegades. Coming to his rescue, she secrets him away to safety, heals his body...and falls in love with him. But Ty, having lost everything in the Civil War, dreams of rebuilding his fortune and sharing it with the perfect "silken lady" of his imaginings. In Janna, he finds a woman who matches him in intelligence, courage, and strength, but is he too blind and fixated on a dream to appreciate the real woman he holds in his arms?

Reckless Love struck me as being quintessential Elizabeth Lowell, and in a very real way, Lowell represented the best of historical romances from the 80s and 90s. She has a style that is uniquely and unmistakeably her own, and there is a consistency of structure, voice, and characterization to her novels that is certainly evident here as well.

Lowell's heroes are masculine and courageous, with a deeply-ingrained sense of honor. But they are also obtuse and hard-edged. You can almost always count on a Lowell hero to have a bad case of foot-in-mouth disease, and some of the things he says to the heroine may have a 21st century reader cringing -- especially one who is reading this novel for the first time. I don't recall that the hero's diarrhea of the mouth was much of an issue for me when I was younger, but now that I'm an older and more experienced woman, I find I have FAR less tolerance for this boorish behavior.

Lowell's heroines, on the other hand, have aged better for me. Yes, they are very young. No one does the shy but naturally sensual and seductive virgin quite as well as Elizabeth Lowell. I also feel that they put up with far too much emotional and verbal abuse from the heroes, especially during the first half of the story. But I still can't classify them as that most hated of romance constructs: the Too Stupid To Live heroine. In their own way, Lowell's heroines are scrappy and independent characters who work hard and face their fears, and I think it's those qualities which eventually get through to the hero and effect the typical Lowell-style redemption and resolution...after a bit of much-deserved grovelling by the hero, of course!

Despite the predictability of Lowell's formula, though...and despite my cringing every time the hero repeats one of those silly nicknames he uses for the heroine ("satin butterfly", in this story)...I can't help but enjoy her old novels. She tells a good story, and she writes a good story. She doles out bits and pieces of characterization or background in such a way that keeps you turning the pages because you just have to learn MORE. She doesn't get ahead of herself or rush the delivery, and when it comes to the sex scenes, she takes her own sweet time and delivers the goods with hardly a "dirty word" to be found. Physical attraction is always the initial spark between Lowell's characters, but by the time the novel is finished, the reader can't help but feel that the characters really know one another and that their love for each other goes beyond the phsyical and superficial. She gives you a happy ever after you can believe in, and pehaps that's what makes Lowell's novels so satisfying to me, even nearly 20 years after publication.

One note about this book: This is considered the first book in Lowell's Mackenzie-Blackthorn series, but I believe this is the only historical novel in that series. The others are contemporaries.

Saw the movie after I had read the book. This is one of those books I read again and again. Similar how some are with the bible. Many good reviews in here, so don't want to retype what they have said, just wanted to add my 5 stars to the pile.

This book has gained its notoriety from Jim Jarmusch's excellent movie "Ghost Dog - The Way of the Samurai". Personally, I would purchase this book anyway, because I'm fascinated about the samurai and their philosophy. I love it.

This book was scribed by a younger samurai who sat basically at the deathbed of the samurai Yamamoto Tsunetomo. For seven years, the scribe sat and had conversations with Tsunetomo. Tsunetomo had become a monk after the death of his 'Master' in 1700. By 1716 the conversations ended, the result was a large manuscript. Hagakure is a compilation or thread of the most meaningful and 'best' of the manuscript.

The book is a mix of advice, stories, Buddhist teachings and koans, and direction on how to be the best samurai possible. As is more realistic and pure samurai teachings, this focuses less on swordplay than do most of the contemporary 20th and 21st century movies. The book is very much about loyalty--so much so that it is bound to conflict with modern and especially American views of independence, bootstrapping, etc.

Because it is written in small chunks without a specific plot or flow, I found the book to be great as a 'daily reader'. The author seems very calm, sane and without anger, and while I suspect no one would call him Enlightened, it reads without malice. From a Buddhist perspective, I had good luck replacing the word 'master' with 'compassion' and it worked almost seamlessly as a Buddhist reading meditation.

This is a great book however the problem lies with in ther traanslation. the problem is that only 300 of the 1300 phrases were translated. Although this translation gives the basic message that Master Tsunetomo was trying to get a cross you can not truly absorb thius book with out reading everything that Master Tsunetomo intended you to read. Also the entire 5th chapter is left out of this translation. I would recomend to everyone to find a better translation than this one.

I loved it. It's an enjoyable read, full of great stories and full of insights. When I first read this book back in 1998, it had a tremendous impact on my life. It allowed me to view things from a different perspective. I will continue to recommend it to everyone. I also highly recommend the modern day version Understanding: Train of Thought.

For a graduate level musicology or theory student, this is an essential addition to your book collection. Articles cover many topics from ancient to present and are both written and reviewed by top scholars in the field. An excellent starting point for research topics: articles are as comprehensive in scope as textbook, but concise and well cited. The paperback is much more affordable than the hardcover edition (i.e. a graduate student could actually afford it w/o skipping meals), but seems to be of sturdy quality.

Even if one is not a professional musician, music theory can still hold a particular fascination for anyone who is curious about the organization behind music, its physical foundations, and its composition. This book gives an overview of its history through the eyes of academic experts and is sure to please any reader who desires such a summary without getting into the details. Several references accompany each article for those readers who need more in-depth discussion. This reviewer was mainly interested in the mathematical and physical foundations of music theory, and so read only two articles in the book. The review will be confined to these articles therefore.

The article entitled "Music Theory and Mathematics" written by Catherine Nolan naturally begins with a discussion of the Pythagorean influence and its going beyond merely numerical ratios to sophisticated mathematical models incorporating geometry, combinatorics, and algebra. And although the author does not give discuss it, the Pythagorean and neo-Pythagorean influence has found its way into efforts to automate musical composition in the field of artificial intelligence. These efforts have yielded impressive results, and have produced musical pieces that are definitely satisfying to the human ear. The author though gives a highly interesting discussion of the developments over the centuries since the days of the Pythagoreans, particularly the influence of the advances in both physics and mathematics. This was especially true in the seventeenth century, where physics really began to take off, and offered a more realistic foundation for musical theory. There are many other gems to be found in this article, where the reader for example will read about the contributions of Gioseffo Zarlino, the Italian musical theorist and composer who in 1558 extended the Pythagorean `tetractys' to what he called the `senario' and which provided in his view a theoretical justification for the imperfect consonances. The reader will also be exposed to the use of combinatorics to build musical compositions, such that when carried to extreme where are possibilities are considered, one obtains according to the author compositions that go beyond the usual harmonic and melodic syntax. Mersenne's table of possible melodies from 1 to 22 notes is illustrated is illustrated in this article. One also encounters the use of modular arithmetic in the equal temperament scale. The most interesting discussion though in this article is the one David Lewin's use of transformation theory in defining what he calls the `generalized interval system' and `transformation network' The author points to the Lewin musical models as giving an uncountable(!) number of conceivable musical spaces available to music theorists.

Another very interesting article in the book is the one entitled "The Role of Harmonics in the Scientific Revolution" by Penelope Gouk. At first glance one might think that this article is written from the odd "postmodern" viewpoint that to a large extent still permeates historical criticism. It is not however, and the author details a fascinating account of the impact of `harmonics' in the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Most interesting is her assertion that the application of mathematics before the seventeenth century was thought of as `natural magic', which is defined as essentially the use of "occult" forces to bring about changes or effects. Natural magic is to be distinguished from "demonic" magic that makes use of immaterial and intelligent beings or "demons." Thus the phenomenon of "sympathetic resonance" between two bodies was integrated into the new experimental sciences. Readers will remember that Isaac Newton was severely criticized for his universal theory of gravitation due to the belief by some at the time that it's action-at-a-distance property had an "occult" quality to it. But the physics of vibrating strings was developed in due time, and this along with the reaction of Enlightenment philosophers against any traces of the "occult" in experimental science was a reason for the acceptance of harmonics as reasonable and scientific. Extreme views of sympathy were elaborated however proposed, one due to Robert Fludd and discussed by the author in this article. Parts of the universe he thought were "sympathetically interrelated" with actions in one part having influence on another. It is fascinating to contemplate in retrospect that the physical behavior of the pendulum and the vibrating string held so much sway in the minds of philosophers, scientists, and mystics. This continues to this day of course, but in a much more elaborate manner, going by the name of string theory. Any vestiges of the occult are not present in any modern physical theory, and action-at-a-distance has been essentially replaced by the curvature-of-spacetime paradigm of Albert Einstein. Very loosely speaking however, the combination of the (quantized) vibrating string and the Einstein notion of gravity as being curvature of spacetime is what string theory is all about. Harmonics in this sense is therefore alive and well and is deeply integrated into the physics community at the present time.

This book is a very important and useful survey of all major areas of western music theory, including both its history, and current state of things.
Surely it is a bit pricey, but it is a treasury of information and is necessary, I think, to every researcher in the field of music theory and related (interdisciplinary) areas. It also covers psychology of music, and methodology of teaching music. Every chapter tries to give a complete, if brief, overview of the subject, and bibliography is simply great. You won't regret buying it!

not only for photographers.
But if you do like making more interesting pictures there is plenty of precise and useful information about where and when and how make a nice picture of animals or geisers!

I bought three books to prepare for two days photographing Yellowstone National Park and this was the best. It was very helpful for planning times of day to be in various locations and prioritizing stops. My favorite photo was the rainbow on Lower Falls that occured exactly when the author said it would. If you love photography and don't have a lot of time in the park, this book is a must have!

Gustav Verderber was right on the money about everything in this book. If you only have a week to explore, save yourself some time and follow his instructions. He has mapped out when the rainbows appear on the falls, gives advice on where to photograph wildlife. Some of the trails he mentions in his book have since been closed due to erosion or wildlife management but if you talk with the Park Ranger Service (not Xanterra!) you should be able to find a comparable walk to capture the images.

The book may be beneath the experienced photographer but for an amateur who just wants better vacation photos and does not have the luxury to spend a year in the park getting them, this is the perfect guide!