Average customer rating:
- Limited Diet
- Depression free naturally ; 7 weeks to eliminating anxiety, despair, fatigue and anger
- Depressed? It could be your starved brain crying out for...
- spread the word
- Excellent book!
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Depression-Free, Naturally: 7 Weeks to Eliminating Anxiety, Despair, Fatigue, and Anger from Your Life
Joan Mathews Larson
Manufacturer: Wellspring/Ballantine
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 Mood Disorders
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Seven Weeks to Sobriety: The Proven Program to Fight Alcoholism through Nutrition
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The Omega-3 Connection: The Groundbreaking Antidepression Diet and Brain Program
ASIN: 0345435176
Release Date: 2001-01-02 |
Book Description
In this groundbreaking book, nutritionist Joan Mathews Larson, Ph.D., founder of Minnesota's esteemed Health Recovery Center, offers her revolutionary formulas for healing your emotions--biochemically. Through proven all-natural formulas, Seven Weeks to Emotional Healing will help you find the emotional well-being you've been missing your entire life. Inside you'll discover how to
- Screen yourself for emotional and behavioral symptoms
- Recognize the mental and physical clues that indicate biochemical imbalances
- Heal your depression and anxiety with the right vitamins and minerals
- Stabilize your mood swings and protect your well-being with essential fatty acids
- Choose the right foods for optimal mental fitness
- Rejuvenate your body with key natural hormones
Safe, fast, more long-lasting and cheaper than prescription drugs or psychotherapy, Seven Weeks to Emotional Healing will help you find balance and well-being.
Customer Reviews:
Limited Diet.......2007-09-11
The book is very interesting and certainly has merit. Most of the diet recommendations would not work for me because of dairy, cholesterol, sugar, and arthritis issues.
If the author could find a diet that more people could be on or more choices in the diet, I might have followed it.
I did take the time to fill out the questions, and found the results interesting. Worth getting the book, just for this.
Depression free naturally ; 7 weeks to eliminating anxiety, despair, fatigue and anger.......2007-09-09
Great book! Everyone who has addiction or suffering from depression should read it. This book tells you how you can get well and keep well
with vitamins and supplements instead of drugs that have after effects. Dr Mathews really cares for people and want to help them get well and keep well. I wish I had read this book long time ago.
Depressed? It could be your starved brain crying out for..........2007-05-29
Did you know your brain can send you into depression if you don't give it the right bio-chemical food?
If it gets to much of 1 sort of mineral for example it can go into a toxic pattern and send you even further down.
This book is a very comprehensive & easy to understand guide to bio-chemical imbalances in your brain that may be triggering depression, anxiety, anger, compulsive disorders etc.
Using vitamins, minerals, amino acids, hormones, etc, Joan Mathews-Larsen has been treating people with emotional & alcoholic disorders since 1980 & knows what she's talking about.
A psychologist once told me there are three things you need to do to treat emotional illness -
1, councilling, hypnotherapy etc.
2, balance the brains bio-chemicals using drugs or preferably with vitamins, minerals, amino acids etc.
3, make your own decisions about what you want to do in life.
If you do all three, you'll be much better off.
Joan Mathews-Larsen's book definitely address's balancing the brains bio-chemicals - it helped me discover an illness called Pyroluria which was sabotaging my body and starving me of zinc, manganese, magnesium B6 and P5P....
Buy this book to make sure your brain isn't running low on bio-chemical fuel and spiraling you into depression .
spread the word.......2007-05-11
I personally have not tested the recommendations in this book yet, but there are SO MANY people dealing with chemical imblanaces in this day. I have always been convinced that fast food (lack of nutrition) and different chemicals in our environment have played a HUGE role in the problem. This book really offers a confirmation for what I have believed- PLUS it gives a way out. Apparently a very successful way out. I am also going to read the book by the same author on getting sober- using a proven nutritional program. The comments on violent behavior among felons are revolutionary. The author explores a way to diagnose this as a chemical imblance and gives specific nutritional solutions. The thought that if we provided better nutrition for our society we could cut crime back. Drug addiction- also a problem nutritionally -
For a better world --spread the word!!! Read this book!
Excellent book!.......2007-05-07
This book is excellent. Provides detailed information about conditions and the products that can help heal it. I have shared the book with several friends and every single one of them have bought the book, shared the information with others, or will buy it in the near future. In fact that is the way I came to know about it and bought it.
Amazon.com
As the old saying goes, hindsight is always 20-20; people looking back on the Holocaust and the events leading up to it often wonder why the Jews didn't flee Nazi Germany or why they put up with the prejudice and degradation inflicted upon them by the Nazis. From our perspective, 50 years later, it seems almost incredible that the victims of genocide didn't see it coming and made little effort to escape. But as Marion Kaplan makes clear in her powerful book, Between Dignity and Despair, the choices were much murkier at the time. The Jews didn't leave because Germany was their home and had been for centuries; like everyone else, they had responsibilities and commitments to family, jobs and communities that kept them there. Nor, in the early days of Hitler's regime, could the Jews of Nazi Germany have foreseen the terrible humiliations they would suffer or imagined the horror of the Final Solution.
Kaplan's sensitive narrative, supported by a host of letters, memoirs, and interviews, aims to give a balanced account of German Jewry under the Nazi regime. She convincingly shows how it was German society (indoctrinated by Nazi propaganda) that dealt the first crippling moral blow to the Jewish psyche, before any laws dictated their actions. The Jews succumbed to daily humiliations, ranging from little boys being maliciously teased for being circumcised to older Jews being treated like social pariah's by one-time friends who fell easily into the mindset of racial enmity. Hatred breeds hatred; slowly the German populace strangled the pride of the Jews, creating resentment, distrust and disharmony. Kaplan conveys a poignant, yet subtle message: the fundamental de-facto abandonment of decency and moral civility by the gentile Germans was the catalyst which allowed Nazi leadership to proceed with more aggressive policies that ultimately led to the Holocaust.
Book Description
Between Dignity and Despair draws on the extraordinary memoirs, diaries, interviews, and letters of Jewish women and men to give us the first intimate portrait of Jewish life in Nazi Germany. Kaplan tells the story of Jews in Germany not from the hindsight of the Holocaust, nor by focusing on the persecutors, but from the bewildered and ambiguous perspective of Jews trying to navigate their daily lives in a world that was becoming more and more insane. Answering the charge that Jews should have left earlier, Kaplan shows that far from seeming inevitable, the Holocaust was impossible to foresee precisely because Nazi repression occurred in irregular and unpredictable steps until the massive violence of Novemer 1938. Then the flow of emigration turned into a torrent, only to be stopped by the war. By that time Jews had been evicted from their homes, robbed of their possessions and their livelihoods, shunned by their former friends, persecuted by their neighbors, and driven into forced labor. For those trapped in Germany, mere survival became a nightmare of increasingly desperate options. Many took their own lives to retain at least some dignity in death; others went underground and endured the fears of nightly bombings and the even greater terror of being discovered by the Nazis. Most were murdered. All were pressed to the limit of human endurance and human loneliness. Focusing on the fate of families and particularly women's experience, Between Dignity and Despair takes us into the neighborhoods, into the kitchens, shops, and schools, to give us the shape and texture, the very feel of what it was like to be a Jew in Nazi Germany.
Customer Reviews:
Wonderfully informative.......2007-05-30
This book does a marvelous job of helping us to understand how such a thing as the Holocaust could occur in a supposedly "civil" society such as Germany in the mid-20th century. Kaplan shows us how the deprivations increased so incrementally that by the time people became aware of what was truly taking place, it was too late for many of them to rescue themselves. This book also reveals how the people of Germany came to accept what was happening to the Jewish people among them; even rejoicing in it, and it lifts the veil over our eyes of the day-to-day tribulations endured before the exterminations. Well done.
"Social Death".......2004-04-13
Marion Kaplan's, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) is an in-depth study into the lives of Jewish people in Nazi Germany beginning with the takeover by Adolf Hitler in 1933. She concludes that not only were the physical lives of the Jewish people tormented and taken from them, the pervasiveness of the German government into everyday life led to emotional and physiological death of the Jews.
In developing the reader's mind to comprehend the lives of the Jews, Kaplan gives attention to little known details of Nazi Germany. As spoken about in chapter one, by establishing the Jews as social outcasts, they were removed from the rest of Germany. The new position of Jews in the public sphere affected their private lives as well. Focusing primarily on the role of women in the Jewish household, the challenges of dealing with new laws makes apparent the death beyond that of the physical means. Perhaps most intrusive to the emotional downfall of the Jews was the hostile environment they were forced to live in everyday. Faced with the torturous nature of school, Jewish children became aware of the plight of their families even as their parents tried to hide it from them. The November Pogrom of 1938 stifled the Jews politically, economically, and socially more intensely and more violently that ever before. By the official outbreak of World War II, Hitler had succeeded in massacring the Jews psychologically.
Throughout the book Marion Kaplan makes it very apparent that the destruction of Jews did not begin when war was declared in 1939 but instead in 1933. The affliction against the Jewish people deteriorated them emotionally and psychologically as well as physically. There is concrete evidence proposed in the book such as the staggering number of suicides, and the indifference to death among the Jews. The deceased were not criticized or blamed for their actions, but they were admired and envied signifying the loss of Jewish will to live.
Overall, Marion Kaplan's Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany is extremely well written. Through her frequent use of primary sources, the pain and distress of the Jews is more easily comprehended as the expressions of the suffering Jews appeal to the reader's emotions. Its exploration of little known details of Jewish life in Germany is useful not only to those studying the Holocaust, but also to all people. Kaplan makes it evident that acts of discrimination or the invasiveness into one's private life can profoundly destroy a person's pride. Ultimately, the destruction of the emotional and physiological conditions of people can occur as it did to the Jews in Nazi Germany.
Accurate Portrayal of the results of hatred.......2002-09-10
Missing in many Holocaust works are the experiences of common German Jews and what daily life for them became like after Hitler's rise to power in the early 1930s. One can read about the Nuremberg Laws or the November Pogrom but one can't get a real feel for how those laws impacted daily life except through memoirs and the testimony of common people. Marion Kaplan's book wonderfully fills the gap between history from the "top down" and history from the "bottom up."
This book makes you realize that stories of hiding and rescue weren't just an occasional thing that's celebrated by Hollywood in such things as Schindler's List, but they happend every day. Kaplan also makes it clear the incredible courage involved in hiding and also the courage of others who hid Jews during Hitler's reign of terror. One bone of contention among historians many times is also how popular were the anti-Semitic measures, with many historians asserting that the population at large really wasn't that bad. Kaplan's book destroys any myths that the German popluation didn't overwhelmingly approve of Hitler's anti-Semitic measures, even if they perhaps didn't see the conclusion of them coming in the "Final Solution." If a German didn't know about the anti-Semitic measures it's only because they willingly didn't pay attention or tried to delude themselves.
One interesting part that Kaplan writes about are the Jews who collaborated with the Nazis in cities as "Jew Hunters," including one Jewish woman who led the Gestapo to over 60 hidden Jews in a single day. Reading stories such as this, perhaps Hannah Arendt's frightening conclusion wasn't so far off in that without the help of the Jews many more could have been saved.
The one drawback to this book is that Kaplan focuses on memoirs and testimony exclusively from women and assumes much about the male Jewish population. This could have been a much better book if she had included memoirs from a wider selection of men rather than constantly referring to Klemperer's book.
Intersection between Jewish and Women's history.......2001-11-30
In Between Dignity and Despair, Kaplan sought to examine the everyday lives of Jewish people under the Nazi Regime. Many Holocaust historians tend to approach the Jewish history from the male perspective (as men were involved in politics). Kaplan sought to explain the importance of women's roles in the Jewish society and how Jewish women urged their husbands to leave Germany when the Nazi gained power and influence.
Kaplan also sought to explain what it felt like to be a Jew living under the Nazi regime and how they became isolated from the rest of the society. She also explained how by and large Germans participated in this persecution and by this she did not mean physical persecution but social persecution.
She gave special attention to the Jewish women and how the women tried to adapt to their new roles and the new situation. The women were able to provide mental and emotional support to their families when their husbands lost their jobs. It was indeed insightful to see how the women were able to cope and how they were the first group to realize the isolation that took place, mainly because of their interaction with neighbors, store owners, public officials, etc.
I would recommend this book for anyone who wants to learn more about the Jewish life under Nazi Germany and the focus here is not those who suffered under the concentration camps but the "ordinary people" who had to cope with their new situation.
Haunting and painful........2000-02-20
Between Dignity and Despair is haunting and painful. The statistics of the Holocaust and "sadistics" of its perpetrators can never capture the true cost in Human terms. History is more than a chronicle and analysis of events. It is also an understanding of the experiences of the people who lived through those events. These experiences do not lend themselves to quantitative assessment and validation. None-the-less, the stories and letters of the people who lived during that time are essential to our interpretation of the geopolitical, military and social events that have shaped our world.
The great question facing us today involves the "collective guilt" of the German people for the persecution and genocide of their Jewish neighbors. The frightening and logical extension of this question is: if such horrors can arise from the children "of the enlightenment," could it not also come from "the sons and daughters of liberty?" It is clear from these accounts that the society as a whole, actively and passively, participated in this process. When studied in Human terms, it is inconceivable that it could have happened any other way.
Cain, after murdering Able, asked of God "Am I my brother's keeper?" The response of the German people to the obvious disenfranchisement, persecution and suffering of the Jews seemed to be: "It depends on your definition of `brother.'" It teaches us that our high and noble beliefs such as equality, liberty, freedom, and brotherly love, are empty words if not applied universally. This lesson was painfully learned in 19th century America when the statement "all Men are created equal" was understood as only applying to those of White, Northern European ancestry.
Between Dignity and Despair is haunting and painful because within its pages we see our own demons and feel the fragility of our own Humanity. We also see to what extreme our quiet personal prejudices can lead us when they go unchecked by the better angels of our nature.
Ms Kaplan has contributed to our understanding of the horrors of systematic psychological terrorism practiced by the Nazis. No revisionist, seeking to absolve German society, can deny the conclusions drawn from the experiences she has documented. Her work is essential to an understanding of the Holocaust.
Book Description
A memoir of hope for the thousands of women struggling with infertility, from one who beat the odds by simply tuning in to her body and tapping her well of sheer determination.
At a time when more and more women are trying to get pregnant at increasingly advanced ages, fertility specialists and homeopathic researchers boast endless treatment options. But when Julia Indichova made the rounds of medical doctors and nontraditional healers, she was still unable to conceive a child. It was only when she forsook their financially and emotionally draining advice, turning inward instead, that she finally met with reproductive success. Inconceivable recounts this journey from hopeless diagnoses to elated motherhood.
Anyone who has faced infertility will relate to Julia’s desperate measures: acupuncture, unidentifiable black-and-white pellets, herb soup, foul-smelling fruit, even making love on red sheets. Five reproductive endocrinologists told her that there was no documented case of anyone in her hormonal condition getting pregnant, forcing her to finally embark on her own intuitive regimen. After eight caffeine-free, nutrient-rich, yoga-laden months, complemented by visualization exercises, Julia received amazing news; incredibly, she was pregnant. Nine months later she gave birth to a healthy girl.
Unlike the many infertility books that take a clinical “how to” approach, Inconceivable simply professes the wisdom of giving expert status back to the patient. Julia’s self-discovery, and her ability to see her body as an ally once again, yield a beautiful message about the importance of honoring the body’s innate powers, and the power of life itself.
Download Description
A memoir of hope for the thousands of women struggling with infertility, from one who beat the odds by simply tuning in to her body and tapping her well of sheer determination.
At a time when more and more women are trying to get pregnant at increasingly advanced ages, fertility specialists and homeopathic researchers boast endless treatment options. But when Julia Indichova made the rounds of medical doctors and nontraditional healers, she was still unable to conceive a child. It was only when she forsook their financially and emotionally draining advice, turning inward instead, that she finally met with reproductive success. Inconceivable recounts this journey from hopeless diagnoses to elated motherhood.
Anyone who has faced infertility will relate to Julia's desperate measures: acupuncture, unidentifiable black-and-white pellets, herb soup, foul-smelling fruit, even making love on red sheets. Five reproductive endocrinologists told her that there was no documented case of anyone in her hormonal condition getting pregnant, forcing her to finally embark on her own intuitive regimen. After eight caffeine-free, nutrient-rich, yoga-laden months, complemented by visualization exercises, Julia received amazing news; incredibly, she was pregnant. Nine months later she gave birth to a healthy girl.
Unlike the many infertility books that take a clinical "how to" approach, Inconceivable simply professes the wisdom of giving expert status back to the patient. Julia's self-discovery, and her ability to see her body as an ally once again, yield a beautiful message about the importance of honoring the body's innate powers, and the power of life itself.
Customer Reviews:
Great read. A wonderful story of alternatives!.......2007-09-08
I bought this for my sister-in-law, but since I'm a pregnancy/birth junkie I read it before sending it to her. I think it's a wonderful reminder that western docs do not know everything there is to know about fertility and infertility, but they tend to act like they do and present no alternatives.
My sister-in-law just had her first baby a few months ago after 10 years of trying. The few years of Western fertility treatment did not work and she hadn't yet gotten around to the acupuncture I was urging her to get. It happened naturally after they came out to visit my hubby and daughter and me.
Nothing like someone else who understands........2007-07-26
Although the author is struggling with secondary infertility she still is suffering, as we all are. I saw I was not alone in what I was feeling and she opened up my mind and heart through her journey. I found it very helpful and I read in 24 hours cover to cover.
Amazingly hopeful, beautifully written, a must-read for anyone struggling with infertility.......2007-04-19
In the midst of my own struggle with infertility, I luckily came across Julia Indichova's beautiful book, Inconceivable. Her story of hope has touched me like no other book I've read on this subject and it was this book which allowed me to discover the author's support circles, workshops and website community which I have found to be an invaluable resource on this difficult journey. I highly recommend this book for anyone, male or female, who is struggling with infertility. I also highly recommend her second book, The Fertile Female which provides hands-on techniques for practicing what Julia calls her "Fertile Heart" tools. Incorporating these tools into my daily life has transformed me mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. While there are many tools regarding diet, exercise and relaxation, the most valuable and unique tools are the mind-body imagery and body talk tools. Deep within each of us who travel on this confusing, often scary journey through infertility, there exists a powerful and magnificent life force that is yearning to be heard. We can tap into this force more easily by listening to our bodies and connecting with our true self. The Fertile Heart tools exist to help us to this, and I am so grateful to have found them. The Fertile Female: How the Power of Longing for a Child Can Save Your Life and Change the World
Worthwhile...but read with a HUGE grain of salt.......2007-03-26
First of all, don't read this book if you are looking for in-depth info or specifics regarding a story of infertility. The reader is given pretty vague details about the author's "infertility"--only her age, FSH number, and a previous pregnancy, and no details on when the FSH was even taken in her cycle (we presume 3, but it isn't confirmed), and no other numbers from her testing, and the reader is then led to believe that a woman with an FSH of 42 (with her lab assay indicating 20 being limit for normal) can't conceive--at all.
The premise of this book is false. In reality, if you read up a lot on infertility, then you are probably aware that numerous women with higher FSH can and do conceive. Even if a woman has poor egg quality and quantity, that doesn't mean that every once in a while, she can't kick out a decent egg in a given cycle and achieve pregnancy. Not common, but it happens. The difference is that assisted reproduction techniques, especially IVF, depend on a woman being able to produce a decent number of quality follicles after drug stimulation. Women with high FSH and age typically are poor candidates for IVF, because they can't generate many follicles, of a decent size, and even if they do, the eggs sometimes are too fragile to withstand the IVF process and die upon retrieval, or subsequently fail to implant. So, while it makes sense that the author was probably refused admittance to IVF programs, it seems to me that the author misconstrued this as meaning she could never have a child. If the author was literally told that women with high FSH NEVER conceive, then the doctors or their assistants were just morons. Which is also possible.
In any event, I have to agree with "Bookcrazed" that this book is a tad dangerous. Not all women with infertility are going to be able to take yoga, go vegan and organic, and reduce stress, and then suddenly become pregnant after serious diagnoses and problems. And I was also very unimpressed with the anecdotes from people visiting workshops who got pregnant. A lot of them were young compared to most infertility patients or had minor issues to overcome or no diagnosis of infertility or diminished ovarian reserve. If this program really worked, we could anticipate seeing women 40-50, conceive with very high FSH numbers, after years and years of Western infertility treatments failed. And that's not what most of the anecdotes are. So, I think this book has to be careful in terms of not trying to sell snake oil to women who are desperate to conceive. And the author apparently does workshops on her regimine, so there is a financial stake in all this. If you have ever looked at fertility seminars/retreats around the country, you will note that some of them cost thousands of dollars!
I also think that few people could really do this regime. The woman gives up all alcohol, caffeine, dairy, and meat. One of her big things is daily organic "juicing." This women did not have a full time job. So, it's a totally vegan and organic diet that would be incredibly expensive and time consuming. People with full time jobs or budget limitations would have a very tough time with this. And she wasn't stressed out like people who have no kids, because she already had a toddler.
She also had a much younger husband (7-8 years?) which is worth noting because many women with infertility issues may be using donors, or if they are over 40, have husbands even older than themselves, and this can affect outcomes.
Having said this, I think it's a worthwhile read if you read this in the frame of mind that: 1) it is good to question doctors; and 2) getting in touch with your body and radically improving your health overall in terms of stress, counseling, some physical activity, and big nutritional changes could possibly tip the balance for some women, and even assuming it doesn't--and you should not expect it too- you will be in great shape.
I think there are some more realistic books out there on this issue that are also worth reading. One I recently enjoyed is the one "Waiting for Daisy" by Peggy Orenstein. Well written. Funny, relatable, frank. Orenstein eventually conceives despite a lot of odds--one ovary, cancer, miscarriage issues, a husband 10 years old and she's almost 40, but unlike this author, Orenstein ultimately conceives when she isn't really trying, and Orenstein is frank about how acupuncture and alternative medicine did NOT work for her, and is equally critical of how Western doctors are frequently trying to sell the product more than oversee the care. I also like, Liz Tilberis' "No time to die" about her unsuccessful fertility treatments, as well as Ann Taylor Fleming's "Motherhood Deferred"--she was also ultimately unsuccessful. Makes you realize that if you aren't successful, you aren't alone.
moral of the story--never give up.......2007-01-11
This author really inspires with her tale of how she persisted through negative medical predictions to conceive her second daughter. Her story highlights the fact that averages and statistics are just that, and that we can participate in our own reproductive destinies.
Average customer rating:
- Great read
- A good series, but treading water in this one
- It drags a bit, but great story anyway!
- Keep on Reading. . .
- Another Great Adventure
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The Dragon of Despair (Wolf)
Jane Lindskold
Manufacturer: Tor Books
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Binding: Mass Market Paperback
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Wolf Captured (Wolf)
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Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart (Wolf, Book 2)
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Wolf Hunting (Wolf)
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Through Wolf's Eyes (Wolf, Book 1)
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Wolf's Blood (Wolf)
ASIN: 0765341581
Release Date: 2004-04-06 |
Book Description
Raised by smart, language-using wolves, far from humans, then brought back to the court of Hawk Haven, young Firekeeper had to learn to cope with human society. Fortunately, for one raised amidst intelligent pack animals, the intrigues of humans are neither complex nor wholly unfamiliar.Now Melina Shield, the beautiful, unscrupulous, and thoroughly discredited sorceress whose power-hungry intrigues have already made so much trouble for Firekeeper, has once more used her power to cloud men's minds, and has induced the ruler of New Kelvin to marry her. This is bad news on a lot of fronts.It's particularly bad news for Firekeeper. Melina hasn't abandoned her schemes to gain power through the use of forbidden ancient sorcery. And the leaders of the royal beasts who watch over this world have given Firekeeper--and her intelligent wolf companion Blind Seer--the responsibility for stopping her.
Customer Reviews:
Great read.......2007-02-20
Well written with great character development. Am currently re-reading it in anticipation of starting the next two books in this series. I'm amazed at how well it holds my attention the second time through. The wealth of details which were forgotten by me make it a great read again. One of the top ten authors in my book.
A good series, but treading water in this one.......2005-11-16
Firekeeper is back in her third adventure. The strengths of the earlier volumes, strong characters in an interesting setting, are back, but the 'been there, done that' feeling in this book is too strong to recommend it for me.
In this book, Firekeeper returns to the same place (the capital of the neighboring kingdom of New Kelvin) with pretty much the same companions, to fight the same villain as in the previous installment. Why Firekeeper and her companions are able to return safely to New Kelvin when the authorities there know that they are responsible for the death of a Kelvinese and have guessed that they stole priceless artifacts is never adequately explained, but exactly what they plan to do when they get there isn't very well explained either.
A subplot involving a new human settlement at the site of the old Bardenville settlement that Firekeeper came from has potential, but doesn't really emerge. It seems to be intended mainly to set up a villain for a future sequel.
There is some interesting exploration of the culture and politics of New Kelvin. But the characters don't advance very much at all. Overall, I found this book mostly a disappointment after enjoying Lindskold's earlier work.
It drags a bit, but great story anyway!.......2004-08-31
OK, it could have been paced faster; some times I just wanted to yell get on with it! Yet, in the end the suspense was good and the ending great; setting up for the next Firekeeper yarn. Will Elise marry Doc? What about the evil queen in the Isles? All sorts of stuff can happen. She had to leave some stuff for the next book.
Keep on Reading. . ........2003-11-14
I'm having a hard time deciding whether I liked the first book in this series or this one, but so far all the books are wonderful.
Part of the conflict in this book revolves around the villain, Melina Shield, who has just been wedded to the monarch of New Kelvin. The other major conflict that progresses the plot is the madness of Citrine, which presumalby will be cured if she can confront her mother, who caused her to be traumatized to the point of insanity. All of the main characters from the first two books are there to contribute (on varying levels; Sir Jared and Elise hardly do anything).
There have been complaints that there is little character deleopment in this book. This isn't entirely true. Firekeeper has some very complicated mental issues to deal with, Edlin matures a lot, and Citrine learns how she can fit herself into the world.
Overall, this is a true page-turner, with all the riveting plot twists and wonderful prose you can expect from Jane Lindskold. If another one of these books comes out, I'd definetly read it!
Another Great Adventure.......2003-10-07
Dragons continues the story of Melina vs. Firekeeper, but as with all the Firekeeper novels, it's more than just "good vs. evil." It's also about levels and layers of political intrigue - and this time, not just between the assorted human kingdoms. The wise wolves that raised Firekeeper have kingdoms of their own, and now their council is getting into the act. Once again, the plot twists and turns unexpectedly, with the fates of individual characters and whole kingdoms in doubt up to the last breathlessly turned page.
Average customer rating:
- Wonderful!
- Love poems for all of us
- One of my favorite writers
- the most romantic book of love poems ever written
- Beautiful, wrenching poetry
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Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair: Dual Language Edition (Penguin Classics)
Pablo Neruda
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
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ASIN: 0143039962 |
Book Description
The Nobel Prize-winning poet's most popular work
When it appeared in 1924, this work launched into the international spotlight a young and unknown poet whose writings would ignite a generation. W. S. Merwin's incomparable translation faces the original Spanish text. Now in a black-spine Classics edition, this book stands as an essential collection that continues to inspire lovers and poets around the world.
Customer Reviews:
Wonderful!.......2007-01-17
This book was very beneficial as I translated some of the poems myself. It allowed me to compare differences in the two translations and choose which was most accurate.
Love poems for all of us.......2007-01-09
Our Spanish is weak, mine much weaker than hers, but the language speaks, the tone of the language sings, as we sit on a beach and share these beatiful poems, in words we understand, and sounds we listen to.
One of my favorite writers.......2006-08-15
In this duel language edition, the voice is soft, sincere, and refreshing. His language borders on a passion that seems to rouse the senses like skydiving, or waiting for first rain. I recommend this book and all his books to the poetry reader.
the most romantic book of love poems ever written.......2006-04-07
perhaps this is the most romantic and most beautiful book of love poems ever written. every word, every stanza is so easily read, so quickly understood, like an arrow to the heard. give this gift to your lover and they will never forget it.
Beautiful, wrenching poetry.......2004-07-30
A beautiful gift for a lover. Perfect Valentine's Day gift or some other romantic moment. Draw a bath for them, light a candle, pour some wine, and sit and read them some of these often torrid poems. You will thank me later! MUCH later!
Book Description
Mind exercises developed from neuroscience and brain mapping short circuits depression by disconnecting the message that you are depressed from one part of the brain to the other. Side-step the depression going on in the emotional part of the brain (the subcortex) by taking temporary refuge in the thinking part of the brain (the neocortex) which never contains depression.
Customer Reviews:
Dear Author, You are an Idiot.......2007-09-29
Dear Author, You are an Idiot!
I could hardly wait until my first review appeared on amazon.com. But my excitement soon turned to rude shock. Ouch! As the author of nine books I was used to letters from readers who said nice things like, `Your book saved my life,' or `Thank you for writing this.' Nobody had prepared me for insults!
I'm not alone. No author can escape the malign of the amateur critics whose time has come. Before amazon.com, those who didn't take a fancy to something you said, didn't go to the trouble of tracking you down to tell you so.
The ease of firing off a sentence or two on the Web without having to put pen to paper or stamp to envelope has spawned a whole new species of vilipendious critics just itching to vent their spleen on the great American novel.
If you think junkyard dogs are mean, just go write yourself a book. Get yourself a literary agent, sell your book to a publisher, then sit yourself down at your computer and get ready for the abuse that's about to be poured upon your head--even if you've written a bestseller.
Tom Clancy's 168 reviews for `Patriot Games' fairly explode with enthusiasm: `one of Clancy's best,' `an intense thrill ride,''this book will keep you at the edge of your seat.' Then reviewer Mr. Druitt (Munfordville, Kentucky) weighed in: `I have never expected too much from Tom Clancy...'Patriot Games' is surely the most ridiculous novel written in many years, but its unintended hilarity almost redeems the insipid dialogue and flat characters.' Thank you for sharing, Mr. Druitt!
Thanks to amazon.com, everybody sees themselves as bona fide literary critics. On a bad hair day, any one of them can now skewer your ten-year authorial effort in five seconds, whether they've read it or not. Here's P. Burke's review of my book, DEPRESSION IS A CHOICE: `First off, since I haven't READ the book (I refuse to pay for something that I can't even stand the title to), my review may be off-base.' You think?
I'm a board-certified cognitive behavioral therapist. I wrote the book to help people get out of depression without drugs. Okay, not the greatest title, I admit. It was my publishers' choice. For my six-figure advance I figured I owed them. My preferred title was `The Woman Who Traded Her Mind for a Green Frog.' `Green Frog' is the name of a mind exercise that short circuits the negative feedback loop of a depressive thought pattern.
DEPRESSION IS A CHOICE received rave reviews like `brilliant and insightful,' `a great book on overcoming depression,' `forever indebted and grateful to the author,' `life saving,' and even, `this book is the culminating healer of my lifelong depression.' It also got `rancid,' `dangerously imbalanced,' and `ignorant premise;' which I tried not to take personally.
Actually, it became easier not to take bad reviews personally after I read Crystal Sparks review (from Oklahoma) of `The Holy Bible: New International Version.' `I hate to say it, but I was rather disappointed with the storyline of this book.' Huh?
Even Pulitzer Prize winners get their fair share of grief. `Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid' by Douglas Hofstadter had 227 reviews: `Exceptional book,' `You will find yourself sitting on such a mental high as you cannot yet imagine,' `You will come away with an understanding of the underlying principles of intelligence, beauty, craft, logic, and universal principles of creation.'
Can there be a negative review on such greatness of thought? Yes: `A mishmash of unrelated ideas. A waste of time. I read this book... about 15 years ago... just remembering makes me nauseous, for the... time and effort it took me... I was younger, naiver and I got engaged, I confess that.... I had the time back then, I guess... suffice to say I was a nerd with a lot of time on my hands.'
Since amazon.com also allows comments on the reviews, Patrick M. Cloud decided to score a point for author Hofstadter on the back of his negative reviewer: ``A nerd with a lot of time on my hands,' and apparently precious little comprehension in his head.'
Once I got over the initial shock I started warming up to the bad reviews on amazon.com, even my own. Especially my own! It's actually fun to read them aloud to disbelieving friends. Positive reviews alone, unleavened by a little dissenting vitriol are really rather boring-- like `American Idol' without Simon Cowell.
Most importantly, bad reviews help authors in a unique way. In my own case, incessant attacks on the idea of conquering depression without drugs just goes to prove the importance of my work. Distilling neuroscience down to everyday terms only impresses those who want to actually make use of the principles in their daily lives. The very thing that turns a nay-sayer off is just the kind of help a lot of people are looking for, and the nay-sayer spotlights it.
Eagerly anticipating one's next bad review on amazon.com may be an acquired taste. But I can hardly wait, because my new book, BRAINSWITCH OUT OF DEPRESSION has only good reviews so far. Bad reviews seem to be a necessary dynamic that make your book come alive. With the range of bad reviews and good reviews, plus an occasional ludicrous one, you really can get a pretty good idea of what any book is like. You can also get a pretty good idea what any reviewer is like.
To each his or her own.......2007-09-28
I don't know what "USA Today" says or doesn't say about brain chemistry, but I do know that A.B. Curtiss is a licensed therapist in the state of California who has spent years studying and working with depression. I suspect she know a little more than "USA Today" does.
That doesn't mean everyone will agree with her. Many people prefer to get their information about brain chemistry and depression from college textbooks or pharmaceutical company literature. They are certainly entitled to do that.
A.B. Curtiss' claims simply that there are alternatives to expensive chemicals and therapies and that people who suffer from depression do have ways of managing the condition. "Brainswitch out of Depression" is a more accessible version of her previous writing, which does provide a lot of the detail that may or may not be lacking in this book.
Half the book is exercises. These illustrate the kinds of behaviors that people can use to master their depression. But that doesn't make it popular psychology. Curtiss writes with a literate elegance that may well put off people who expect to read formulaic self-help. Her writing is not as easy to read as a graphic novel, but to call it "horrible" is hardly fair to Curtiss or to readers who actually are interested in what the book has to say.
I have read "Brainswitch." I don't recall any misspellings or grammatical gaffes. But then again, I read the book to learn from it, not to look for reasons to trash it. I'd like to see see some examples, if only to have a basis for taking that criticism seriously.
A.B. Curtiss has offered a reasonable, nonthreatening alternative to mainstream therapies. It is a little more complicated than "think about something else," but not a lot more. She provides ample reasons to take what she says seriously. Read it yourself. If her suggestions make sense to you, try them. If not, there are more aggressive interventions available to you.
In any case, simply dismissing this book as flawed doesn't make it so.
American Authors Association review.......2007-09-08
Anyone can tell you 'what' to do - this book shows you 'how' to do
It is a simple thing to think a neutral or nonsense thought when you are in the agony of depression. But it is not so easy to do. The other 299 pages is to help you do it.
Anyone with knowledge of mental health, either personal or having worked with individuals suffering from mental illness, know that there is so much more to it than to just think a neutral thought. BRAINSWITCH offers those suffering from depression a wonderful tool to walk them through the process.
303 pages too long.......2007-09-01
If you're looking to learn more about neurochemistry and the way the brain works, move on.
If you're desperate to find relief from the torture of depression, you might want to read this book. I don't see how Curtiss' suggestions could hurt, and it's possible they'll help.
It seems as if Curtiss' knowledge of the brain and the neurochemistry of depression comes from USA Today. She knows a few catch phrases (stress chemicals, serotonin, etc.) which she repeats in every paragraph. Her understanding does not seem to go beyond that.
This book is 319 pages too long. Its entire point can be written in one sentence: if you suffer from depression, focus your mind on an emotionally neutral statement or stimulus, and you will feel better.
The writing in this book is horrible, and the editing (if there was any) is even worse. It's filled with spelling and grammatical errors. It doesn't flow logically from one thought to another, and it repeats itself time and time and time again.
In general, don't both with this book.
Positive Switch.......2007-01-12
I've found this book very effective in switching my mind away from negative thinking - Anon, Australia
Customer Reviews:
this book is the greatest most fantastic book in the world.......1999-05-12
this book is great. Fantastic. I recommed this book to everyon
Book Description
We are all touched at some point by the dark emotions of grief, fear, or despair. In an age of global threat, these emotions have become widespread and overwhelming. While conventional wisdom warns us of the harmful effects of "negative" emotions, this revolutionary book offers a more hopeful view: there is a redemptive power in our worst feelings. Seasoned psychotherapist Miriam Greenspan argues that it's the avoidance and denial of the dark emotions that results in the escalating psychological disorders of our time: depression, anxiety, addiction, psychic numbing, and irrational violence. And she shows us how to trust the wisdom of the dark emotions to guide, heal, and transform our lives and our world. Drawing on inspiring stories from her psychotherapy practice and personal life, and including a complete set of emotional exercises, Greenspan teaches the art of emotional alchemy by which grief turns to gratitude, fear opens the door to joy, and despair becomes the ground of a more resilient faith in life.
Customer Reviews:
Extremely useful for deepening emotional competence - very highly recommended.......2007-02-01
A relatively recent book with the simple but profound concept that fear, grief and despair contain the seeds of great wisdom, vitality and balance when they are experienced fully rather than phobically avoided. It demonstrates how our aversion to pain sabotages our search for happiness. I often recommend this book in my psychotherapy practice.
This booked helped me.......2006-04-01
I am a 9/11 survivor and this book really helped me accept my feelings rather than judging myself for having them. I bought this at Amazon.com from an Awesome Deal I found on DailyTool.com.
Definitely a keeper!.......2003-08-28
Greenspan's book deserves wider recognition. I found it by accident online and I wish I had seen it earlier.
What I liked best: Greenspan writes from her own experienced as therapist and bereaved mother, a woman who came to the US as a young child and lost her first child due to unexplained brain defects. She knows the darker emotions first-hand.
Even better, Greenspan is not afraid to confront the received wisdom of the psychiatric establishment. Medication works for some depressed clients, but it is only by going into the emotion that we can transform despair into faith and fear into joy. She picks up on the values embedded in the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria: depression is a "mood disorder," which means that only cheerful, upbeat people are "normal."
I found myself making notes of key points that were unusual and insightful. In particular, her discussion of "boomerang emotions" will be especially valuable to anyone who's ever been frustrated in one area and acted out in another. It is easy to make impulsive, often dysfunctional decisions after stifling feelings for a long time. This section is one of the best in the book.
On the downside, I wish Greenspan had been more rigorous. Although her views seem sensible, some research suggets disagreement. For example, one study found that people recovered from grief as well if they were medicated as if they were allowed the full experience. Other studies have demonstrated that people experience grief differently. Some may not need to go deep into the feeling.
Because Greenspan works with therapy patients, she does not discuss the context of these "dark" emotions. Despair can be experienced by someone like William Styron, whom she discusses, as a person who seems on top of the world. But would there be a different experience of despair for someone who just lost a job, has little chance of finding a new job, anticipates old age and perhaps has family stresses too? Despair rooted in real obstacles seems somehow different from despair that has more existential "why are we here" origins. And biologically based depression seems to be different altogether.
Many New Age and popular authors (such as best-selling author Lynn Grabhorn) make exactly the opposite point: if you force yourself to be upbeat, your life gets better. I wish Greenspan had addressed this point directly, as some people do seem to do better after forced cheerfulness. This topic may not be amenable to scientific research but it would be nice to see some science-based discussion.
Finally, I wish Greenspan had stated her credentials on the book jacket. Is she a PhD? Does she have degrees? Has she published articles in academic or research journals? I was a little disconcerted by the discussion of chakras in a book by a more-or-less mainstream therapist.
Then again, Greenspan seems to be making a statement. She doesn't like the way we treat the darker emotions. And maybe she doesn't like the way therapists are categorized and pigeon-holed either. After all, there's no research (as far as I know) demonstrating that certain training results in better therapeutic outcomes. Definitely worth a read.
A must read for everyone.......2003-04-10
Everyone has losses. Everyone has wounds. This is not the end of joy but the beginning, if only we can learn to live with and find ourselves in our feelings, and embrace the life that waits for us on the other side of our pain. Miriam Greenspan's wise book is a warm and helpful guide to dealing with the dark emotions we all experience. As a writer and therapist myself I know how needed her book is and how valuable what she has to offer is. This is a must read for everyone.
ESSENTIAL READING FOR ALL PEOPLE........2003-04-04
From Phyllis Chesler, author of eleven titles, including "Women and Madness" and "Woman's Inhumanity to Woman":
Greenspan is the gentlest and therefore the wisest of healers. Her book is a poem, a prayer, a guide, a ritual. She herself models what can be done. She is vulnerable, grief-stricken, mindful, supple, connecting, and joyful. She describes enormous grief and terror--her own, that of the world's--and explains what it means to surrender to fear, to face straight into it, to "let it be" as the royal road to sanity, rightful action and rightful non-action, and to exuberance and freedom.
This book is very easy to read--but not simplistic; political but not rhetorical; spiritual but not dogmatic; literary but also practical. It beholds that which is tragic about the human condition but embraces it in a therapeutic and consoling way. It is both Jewish and Buddhist, feminist and humanist, grave but sometimes funny. Greenspan provides an excellent discussion of the "alchemy of fear," and of the Buddhist concept of "tonglen": non-action, action, surrender. She is excellent on violence, trauma, numbing, and the consequences of omnipresent media in our lives. Her discussion of the world post 9/11 is compelling. The tone is grave, measured, supple, vital, enchanting.
Greenspan is a trustworthy guide for us in these times.
Book Description
An epic biography of post-colonial Africa, and illuminating insight into its current devastating problems, by one of its most authoritative scholars
Fifty years ago, as Europe's colonial powers withdrew, Africa moved with enormous hope and fervor toward democracy and economic independence. Dozens of new states were launched amid much jubilation and the world's applause. African leaders, popularly elected, stepped forward to tackle the problems of development and nationbuilding. In the Cold War era, the new states excited the attention of the superpowers. Africa was considered too valuable a prize to lose.
Today, Africa is a continent rife with disease, death, and devastation. Most African countries are effectively bankrupt, prone to civil strife, subject to dictatorial rule, and dependent on Western assistance for survival. The sum of Africa's misfortunes-its wars, its despotisms, its corruption, its droughts-is truly daunting.
What went wrong? What happened to this vast continent, so rich in resources, culture and history, to bring it so close to destitution and despair in the space of two generations? Focusing on the key personalities, events and themes of the independence era, Martin Meredith's riveting narrative history seeks to explore and explain the myriad problems that Africa has faced in the past half-century, and faces still. From the giddy enthusiasm of the 1960s to the "coming of tyrants" and rapid decline, The Fate of Africa is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how it came to this-and what, if anything, is to be done.
Customer Reviews:
Meaner Truths a Thousand Strong: Africa Slouching Toward Bedlam.......2007-08-08
The father of Russian literature, Alexander Pushkin, once observed: "The falsehood that exalts we cherish more than meaner truths a thousand strong." So, when a Western poll recently identified Nigerians as the happiest people in the world, amidst their squalor, corruption and confusion, the ghost of Pushkin was resurrected. This book does not paint a flattering picture of Africa; in fact, the news is downright bereft of cheer.
Country by country, Meredith's tour de force is, at once, a panoramic survey of all 53 African countries as well as a statistical compendium of each since Ghana was granted independence by Britain in 1957. Except for South Africa, Botswana and Senegal, Meredith retraces the recent 50-year history of each country in a way that plots its course through ethnic violence and infernal pillage by respective Big Men to present-day failure.
Born and raised in Nigeria, I submit that, in meeting all that its title portends, this 752-page book is unequaled in scope, substance and authenticity and should remain so for a long time to come. By omission or commission, Africans may have been set up to fail by their colonial masters, for instance, the sandwich arrangement of British-ruled countries, Nigeria and Ghana, which are each surrounded on all sides by different Francophone countries and the vertical yoking together of heterogeneous ethnic groups that are horizontally homogeneous across countries, have been troublesome. Meredith's magisterial work should persuade Africans to abandon further tendencies to blame former colonial masters and assume full responsibility for the current state of disintegration in which their continent is mired.
[...]One wonders why an African has not published a book that credibly sets the record straight; one asks where else a vulture would stand by waiting for an abandoned, emaciated child to expire so that it can feast on it? Continued denial can only exacerbate the problems of Africa. For other views, visit [...].
Africa, a continent which produces less than the country of Mexico, is not to be pitied; a continent with only 10% of the world's population but which accounts for 70% of AIDS victims is to be rehabilitated; a continent that inherits one despot after another to rule its countries can only retrogress, even with the best-intentioned foreign aid packages.
The wishes and dreams of eternal optimists such as the polymath, Columbia University professor, Jeffrey Sachs, (The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time, Penguin, New York, 2005), are no match for named, predatory African leaders who steal, mismanage or waste foreign aid. Until the well-meaning, disenfranchised, cadre of African professionals, who are economic refugees, living in Western countries, return to rescue, if not recover, their continent, Africa will not return from the depths of despair to the heights of hope.
Meredith's book is insistent in its message and should be read by everyone interested in the economic and political self-reliance of Africa.
The best intro to African modern history.......2007-07-11
The author managed to give some level of detail about almost all the African countries without confusing me. This is not a small task. Actually, I think I still retain quite a bit of detail after reading 700 pages of mass murder and killing that seems to happen to every country. This book offers a good, probably standard, explanation on the cause of all the chaos and tragedy in Africa. Before reading any book about a specific country in Africa, it is well advised to begin with this book.
It feels that Meredith takes the role of a journalist who reports, rather than analyzing the situation, so this is a good introduction book to basic African modern history.
What I would love is for the author to add a new chapter on the updated status of Africa (this book is a bit outdated). For example, it is encouraging that Charles Taylor, the dictator in Liberia, is finally being trialed by the international courts. I love to see more international pressure on these dictators and that oil/commodity money benefiting real local people one day.
So much more... .......2007-06-01
A riveting narration of African troubled history
Textbook material turned into a moving revelation
Objective and thorough yet compelling and captivating
Great Book.......2007-02-23
As a student of Africa and a former peace corps volunteer in Mali, I have read many titlbooks with titles that have words like "Hope", "Fate", Future", "Poverty", "Horror", and "Famine", but this one is the best so far. I would highly recommend this book to anyone with a serious thirst for understanding this continent and I am grateful for Mr. Meredith's wisdom concerning this very important part of our world.
A Journalist's snapshot is not History.......2007-02-08
The important thing to remember about this book is that Martin Meredith is a very good journalist but he is not an historian; and thus this book is not history. It therefore should not be misconstrued as a history of Africa since African independence. It is a very well put together chronicle, a snapshot of one man's selection of key events at one point in Africa's history, accompanied by his own brief interpretation of them.
The author's nearly 800-page, almost clinically dispassionate, country-by-country analysis of Africa after independence is easily recognizable for what it is: the "memory dump" of the logbook of a traveling journalist. And in as much as this is true, no one should be surprised at the book's rather narrow "fact-based focus." Thus, "The Fate of Africa" is neither history nor political science. And since it is without a context, it isn't even a good travelogue -- of the genre of Sanford Unger's and other wandering Afrophiles of the past. These travelogues, one may recall, came with an extensive context that demonstrated the author's interactive facility with the cultures in question. Pure and simple, "The Fate of Africa" is political commentary "at a safe distance from Africa," minus any semblance of being African history.
It is this, at precisely the time in Africa's history when the one thing that is sorely needed is not more "analysis at a distance" about Africa's fate, but serious, sober analysis and explanations of the causes of the current continent-wide cultural melt down. One would not be too wrong in suggesting that "The Fate of Africa" may be the best evidence yet available that, however accurately facts are arrayed and strung together, arrangement of facts alone, "does not a history make."
Thus it is unfortunate that the skilled hands of a fine journalist like Mr. Meredith, has not translated into being an asset to this book. In his much too tightly focused grip, African history after independence has been reduced to what the Mayans have described as the Pacific Ocean: "it is a world without a memory; it has no past." By design, it seems, Mr. Meredith's coldly calculated fact-based version of African culture and politics since independence has been cutoff from, and completely stripped away from, African history - especially from its recent colonial past, which, arguably is at least as sordid as the events the author describes as Africa's fate since independence. And most importantly, it is history that alone can account for the devastation Mr. Meredith so accurately describes.
The clear implication, left dangling in the air as a pregnant hypothesis and part of a familiar subtext about Africa (and the African Diaspora more generally), is the suggestion that: "having achieved their independence, shouldn't blacks on the continent (and by extension in the Diaspora) be doing much better?"
Without the support of history, without a proper context, there is of course only one possible answer to this question, and it is a resounding yes, Africans everywhere should be doing better, much better. But just as "The Fate" leaves one pregnant question dangling, it begs another one: Is it really fair to insinuate such a question about Africa's Fate in the abstract -- as if Africa had no past, especially no colonial past? I believe the answer to this question is an equally resounding, no. It is not fair.
And here is at least one reason why:
Any reasonable reader will not fail to see hidden in the shadows of this text the old familiar lament of the black man being "The White Man's Burden." This is of course the real subtext of Meredith's book. It is about the white man's belief in congenital black inabilities - about the similarities between the melt down since "African independence" and the companion melt down in America's ghettoes since "Black slaves were freed." The subtext is sort of an unstated global smear of blackness, an almost existential slander that is deeply encoded in Western thought and its primordial racist ideology.
But there is no way either of these twin subtexts can be addressed without a direct appeal to and confrontation with history and without serious historical analysis. It is simply unfair to leave as an unstated insinuation that history, historical background and context, and historical analysis play no part in these respective fates, and thus are unnecessary to explain either Africa's or Black America's desperate conditions.
Why must history be invoked? Because without dismantling and destroying the structures that supported colonialism and that continue to support American style racism and Apartheid, African independence and Negro freedom, reduce to mere empty abstractions. They do not become real until the structures that gave rise to them are dismantled and eliminated. And, in either the case of Africa since independence; or America, since emancipation, this dismantlement has not occurred. And that fact is about history, not about journalism.
As Meredith's facts so aptly demonstrate. To a man, the creatures of horror continuing to stalk and ravage Africa - the so-called Big Men or Kleptocrats (Mubuto, Amin, Bokassa. Lumumba, Nguema Mobutu, Nyerere, Banda, to name only a few) all had "made in the West" stamped on their foreheads. And those who failed to tow the Western line such as Mugabe, Kaunda, Kenyatta, Mengistu, Nasser, and Nkrumah were either set up for economic failure, overthrown by Western intelligence, or ridiculed and isolated and deposed by puppets favored by the West. This is history, not isolated facts, not mere journalism.
The same is true of Africans in the U.S.
Out of necessity, an Uncle Tom Nation of "accommodationists Negroes" has evolved as the desperate global response to entrenched and persistent unending racism. In the past, this "black aristocracy" was made up of those all too willing to accept Jim Crow and Apartheid in exchange for a reduction in the freedoms that had been promised but which were unlikely to ever be delivered, in any case. Today, it is only cosmetically different from that ugly and brutal past. This too is painful history, not mere journalism.
The Uncle Tom Aristocracy whether in Africa or the U.S. is the wedge that separates backwardness from progress. It is redeemed and paid off in personal perks, and individual entitlements, and awards to the surrogates of white supremacy, in lieu of not having to address wider Black concerns and issues. Therefore we still have the dramatic ghettos of Detroit, Newark, Philadelphia, Chicago and LA. Exactly the same phenomenon that occurs in Africa, where the Big Men and their associated "Vampire Aristocracies" rake off the cream of African resources and ships them to the West in exchange for Mercedes Benzs and other gaudy Western trinkets. What is left in each case is a prostrate populous with an exceedingly dim future.
In Africa, this is called "independence" in the same way that America's "Uncle Tom Nation" is called "democratic freedom."
In the end a journalist snapshot is a mere detail, a thumbnail sketch of a much larger picture, a factual abstraction of a much larger and deeper human drama. Such details make interesting reading but they do not add up to a full history. Five stars.
Book Description
Like Andy Warhol and Ed Ruscha before him, Jack Pierson expresses himself through a variety of media. Drawn to stardom, melodrama, loneliness, and emotional narrative as subjects for his art, Pierson infuses his work with literal and visual references to lost love, sexual longing, faded glamour, fleeting moments, and sentimental musings.This book will contain approximately 200 works organized into five sections that echo the prevalent themes in Pierson's oeuvre: Riches and Fame, Desire Despair, Rented Rooms, Another Time Another Place, and Ghosts. A subversive playfulness and an erotic undercurrent run throughout, especially in the photographs of men, including never-before-published celebrity portraits.Surveying more than twenty years of the artist's career, this beautifully designed volume marks a milestone for all fans of Pierson's art.
Customer Reviews:
One of the greats of our generation.......2007-03-17
Wow I really do love this book. It's like a mini mid career retrospective. I have many great art books
but this is one of the best. If your into Jack or important art from this time you will want this book.
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- Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (Signet Classics)
- Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse (Oxford World's Classics)
- Everything's an Argument with Readings
- Fall of the Sith Empire (Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi)
- Five Plays: Ivanov, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard (Oxford World's Classics)
- Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood (Sisterhood of Traveling Pants, Book 4)
- Geotechnical Engineering: Principles and Practices
- Half Life: A Novel
- Hemingway And the Mechanism of Fame: Statements, Public Letters, Introductions, Forewords, Prefaces, Blurbs, Reviews, And Endorsements
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- History: Fiction or Science
- Coin Collecting for Dummies
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- Introduction to Group Insurance, 5E
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- Anglo-Spanish Trade Directory
