Book Description
Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? sums up Lou Gerstner's historic business achievement, bringing IBM back from the brink of insolvency to lead the computer business once again.Offering a unique case study drawn from decades of experience at some of America's top companies -- McKinsey, American Express, RJR Nabisco -- Gerstner's insights into management and leadership are applicable to any business, at any level. Ranging from strategy to public relations, from finance to organization, Gerstner reveals the lessons of a lifetime running highly successful companies.
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Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? sums up Lou Gerstner's historic business achievement, bringing IBM back from the brink of insolvency to lead the computer business once again.Offering a unique case study drawn from decades of experience at some of America's top companies -- McKinsey, American Express, RJR Nabisco -- Gerstner's insights into management and leadership are applicable to any business, at any level. Ranging from strategy to public relations, from finance to organization, Gerstner reveals the lessons of a lifetime running highly successful companies. "
Customer Reviews:
Great leader.......2007-08-27
When I started the book, I have no idea about the history of IBM. I am not an IT person, so I have heard IBM but that is basically it.
I learned a lot from the book about IBM, what they did wrong and how he changed it.
But besides everything he revised the company culture and organizational structure. I think that is the hardest thing a CEO can achieve. His vision, his attention to details but still seeing the big picture amazed me. No wonder they picked him as the great saver of the IBM legend.
The book is long and sometimes repeats itself, without going into details.
The part I enjoyed the most was his e-mails. How encouraging was he after 9/11, he mentioned employee names and all the things they did both to help and also to get their business going. He sent e-mails to his 300.000 employees. His tone and the things he mentions, his clarity was amazing. He is an excellent leader. IBM is very lucky to have such a good CEO.
What Life at the Top is Really Like--As Told By a Superb Leader.......2007-08-16
Having spent twenty-three years in management before I became an entrepreneur, I recognize that moving from one side of the desk to the other side may be the longest journey a professional person ever makes. When we shift into a leadership spot, not only do we find that our prior perceptions might have been totally inaccurate, we have to address personal and professional challenges we would have never imagined.
I applaud this book as one man's record of what life at the top is really like. He won me over immediately when he decided to wear a blue shirt because everyone else was wearing white. Thoreau would have applauded his individualism.
With my current profession dedicated to improving individual and corporate communication, I agree with Gerstner's assertion that "No institutional transformation takes place, I believe, without a multi-year commitment by the CEO to put himself or herself constantly in front of employees and speak in plain, simple, compelling language that drives conviction and action throughout the organization."
Another striking bit of Gerstner wisdom: "Success in a company comes foremost from success with the customer, nothing else."
He's right on target again when he observes that "lack of focus is the most common cause of corporate mediocrity."
Yet Gerstner goes beyond mere platitudes: "Execution--getting the task done, making it happen--is the most unappreciated skill of an effective business leader."
Possibly two of Gerstner's words capsule his approach to awakening IBM to its possibilities: "constructive impatience."
In my judgment, Louis Gerstner should rank alongside Jack Welch as a take-no-prisoners leader. Read this book, and you will agree that he was the right man at the right time for IBM.The Complete Communicator: Change Your Communication-change Your Life!
Where Were the Details?.......2007-06-06
Throughout this book Gerstner discusses the changes IBM made and how he helped turned the company around. I have no doubt that he was a large part of the dynamic shift at IBM to again make it the successful, global company that it is today, but I felt that I went through the book without completely understanding what those changes were. There was a lot of discussion of how IBM was operated and managed when Gerstner took control of the company in 1993 as it was falling apart before the public's eyes, and there was a lot of explanation of how IBM was successful and reborn when he stepped down from the CEO position in 2002. But there was little substance in between. I am not sure if that is because the day-to-day steps taken throughout the mid and late 1990s are too mundane for the average business reader, of if the details were just left out. Gerstner does share some insight into leadership skills and his management style, but IBM as is left in the shadows. All in all, this is not a bad book, but be aware that the reader is left wondering exactly how IBM regained its dominant position in the marketplace.
A leader thru change.......2007-05-17
Mr. Gerstner provides his story of when he took over the reigns at IBM and brought the company back on its feet. This is a strict business book with internal memos and charts at the end so it can lend itself to being a bit boring in some parts. However, when the authir describes how he was able to navicate thru the huge complexity of all the different divisions, then this book becomes a valuable reference for any business leader who needs to go thru the same process.
smooth transaction, exact product, nice&easy supplier.......2007-05-14
exact product at an affordable price w a smooth transaction
Book Description
First published to international acclaim in 1984, The Transfer Agreement stunned readers worldwide with its revelations of a pact between Zionist leaders and Hitler's Third Reich. Concluded in 1933, this controversial pact transferred 55,000 Jews and $100 million to Palestine on the condition that Zionist organizations call a halt to their economic boycott of Nazi Germany -- a potent tactic that was threatening to topple Hitler's government, then only in its first year in power. The debate over this controversial deal virtually tore apart the Jewish world in the pre-World War II era, and it remains unresolved today. Whereas the transfer agreement indeed ultimately saved lives, rescued assets, and helped lay the foundation for what would become the Jewish state in 1948, it also -- arguably -- allowed the Nazi regime to survive its first year and, over the next twelve, to plumb the depths of ethnic intolerance and implement massive genocide. With the world today confronting such morally complex issues as the compensation for slave labor during the Holocaust and the refusal of Swiss banks to return Jewish assets to their rightful heirs, the transfer agreement and the boycott that preceded it stand out even more startlingly as early examples of Jewish initiatives against Nazi terror. However ambiguous the choices made by the Jewish leaders in the turbulent prewar 1930s, they stand in a new and different light today. The Transfer Agreement is a remarkable and revelatory book that has now found its time.
Customer Reviews:
Astonishing and powerful read about the realities of Zionism during the Third Reich.......2007-10-09
This was an area of World History that I had no clue about prior to reading this book. This is indeed a tragic story of the plight of Jews in Europe during Hitler's regime. This book was so suspenseful I simply could not put it down. Black does an excellent job of engaging the reader and does not reveal the details of unfolding events until the last moment. Simply WOW!
As person who is not Jewish I think it is important for everybody to learn the lessons of the Third Reich and the Holocaust. However, equally important is that there were greedy and ideology zealots that contributed to the growth of the Third Reich via the Transfer Agreement, i.e., Sam Cohen and even Hoffien and Landauer. The Transfer Agreement was just that a business arrangement to transfer German Jews to Palestine in return German exports would be bought through Zionist entities to ensure the economic growth and wealth of Palestine. Moreover, what was incredibly stunning was the ability of the 18th Zionist Congress to go against the international boycott movement by suppressing the Revisionists- strong arming them into abandoning their ideology.
This makes me wonder what would have happened if the boycott prevailed and the Third Reich "cracked"? Would there still be a Germany today? Would we even have had the Holocaust? I know it may sound harsh and I am sure I will be labeled an anti-Semite because of this, but the reality is according to Black, the Zionists contributed significantly to the rise of the economic and military might of the Third Reich.
This book is simply a phenomenon in and of itself. It completely forces one to reshape how they view events during that time period. I highly recommend this to anyone who wants to learn about a different dimension of relationships between the Third Reich, German Jews, and Zionists. This will definitely through you off and have you thinking for days. Definitely one of my top 10 books of all time.
.....tragic history revisited...........2006-10-25
Researchers have recently unearthed `directives' sent from Heinrich Himmler to Dachau, and Mauthausen concentration camps to the effect that all inmates were to be bathed in showers providing insecticides, their heads cleared of hair, their heavy garments that bore Wool Collars were to be burned outright. The reason for such directives was to prevent lice, and leprosy from spreading among all other inmate prisoners.
Gypsies, Polish, Slavs, Soviets (Christians and Jews) who had been incarcerated during the war and routed into the five main Concentration Camps, {which had been established throughout the years 1933 to 1939}, were in their majority suffering lice parasite, notably on youngsters. Himmler ruled "they should be showered in insecticides twice per week in order to remove the nits attached to their hair - difficult to remove without specialized products."
Many inmates were homosexuals' prisoners of war, suffering from venereal diseases - transmissible. This parasite was widely spreading at the time Germany was lacking enough doctors to take care of the prevention process or even to guard against casual means of transmission.
Most doctors were preoccupied with war related engagements; on their priority list was first and foremost to take care of injuries from battles, research, and the last was to worry about concentration camps per se, unless in absolute emergencies like `fear that certain virus might not be contained and would be causing widespread damage'.
In very few pages of this book did the author speak of Concentration Camps - dispersed on ten pages? Even there he did it casually in the context that ""workers were rushed to construct a mysterious political concentration camp at a pastoral village called Dachau...."" """Every train entering Denmark was crowded with German Jewish refugees..""" indicative that the `Transfer' from Germany to Palestine (in transit through neutral Europe - France had fallen by then) gives credence to this book.
Perhaps written books on the `Pogrom' will soon be revisited and be traced back with more up to date material on these most fateful human tragedies of WWII.
Simply one of the most incredible history books I've read!.......2004-07-19
I cannot praise the author, his research, his explanations and his writing enough for this singular tome. Like other reviewers have said, the reader goes into this book, whether Jewish or not, with their mouth open at the incredibility of this occurence. It's easy enough in hindsight to make judgement calls about what the the leaders of the Jewish community world-wide should have done about Hitler's rise to power. However, given the economic situation of the time and the Reich's strategems to place all blame for Germany's economic hardships on the Jews throughout Europe, it's hard to determine that even had the massive boycotts been organized and on schedule, would they have work? And even more important, if Hitler was ousted due to the economic stranglehold on Germany,who or what would have taken his place? And would that have been any less devastating for the Jews in Europe.
There are few obvious heros and anti-heros in this book, except for the Nazis as being the ultimate in villains. One man paid dearly for his attempts to save European Jewry...with his life. It was not conclusive as to whome the assassins were and who put out the price on his head. It's all too easy to blame the reactionary groups, but there are obvious questions about whether his death was one of convenience so that blame could be placed by the leading group of Mapai at the door of the reactionary Jewish groups.
Sam Cohen was a businessman through and through. His reasoning to press The Transfer agreement was purely motivated by money, and not the need to either save European Jewry or to establish Israel as a separate state. It is this 'selling' of the agreement by so many that is so mind-boggling. So many were willing to take the wealth of German Jewry (and later the funds that were supposed to be used to save the lives of Jews who had no homes or businesses to return to) and use it to set up a home in Palestine...it's beyond my ability to pass judgement on these men as to their motivation, yet I am not certain I could possibly decide to shake the hands of these men. The fact that there was a need to set up a Jewish state, and that there was all this money to fund its establishment is beside the fact. At no other time, was any other method even considered to rescue the millions of Jews trapped, even the children...this is so reprehensible as to curdle anyone's blood.
And though this happened, our countries, including the U.S. and Britain were equally at fault for closing immigration quotas, even though they knew what was going on in Germany. It was easier to merely close their eyes and ignore The Holocaust, until it became obvious that no one was safe from Hilter and his cronies.
This story is just so incredible that I wish there was some way to make it into a movie that does the story justice. I don't suppose that is a possibility. But it is a tremendous story that needs to be included in European history, as it's impact was great. Edwin Black did a fantastic job. (...)
Devasting; THE most jaw-dropping book I've ever read.......2003-01-01
Readers of this book must be going out of their way to avoid its nightmarish implications; even the author sidesteps them. Indeed, the book is mis-titled. It should properly have been called 'The Great Boycott and its Tragic Abandonment.' The transfer agreement was simply the rationale for the staggering historic blunder whereby Jewish organizations in the diaspora allowed themselves to be persuaded by Zionist forces to puncture the spontaneous and swelling worldwide Jewish boycott of German goods taking place in 1933, a movement with enormous and growing non-Jewish support as well, which, had it been supported rather than undercut by major Jewish organizations, could very well have toppled Hitler from power by the spring of 1934. Not only would this have spared 5-6 million Jewish lives, it would have spared another 45 million or so non-Jewish lives lost in the Nazi holocaust. I once believed like many that the Holocaust led to the fulfillment of Zionism; this book shows rather that it was the fulfillment of Zionism which led to the Holocaust. And it was all for nought. Israel would still have come into being and moreover would have had several million extra potential immigrants to draw from. This book is all about a simply horrific wordwide catastrophe that resulted from an incredibly BAD choice based on ethnic nationalism, and it is made instead to appear as merely a somewhat sordid chapter re. a road to nationhood that featured a few nasty bumps along the way. Mind-boggling!
Devasting; THE most jaw-dropping book I've ever read.......2003-01-01
Readers of this book must be going out of their way to avoid its nightmarish implications; even the author sidesteps them. Indeed, the book is mis-titled. It should properly have been called 'The Great Boycott and its Tragic Abandonment.' The transfer agreement was simply the rationale for the staggering historic blunder whereby Jewish organizations in the diaspora allowed themselves to be persuaded by Zionist forces to puncture the spontaneous and swelling worldwide Jewish boycott of German goods taking place in 1933, a movement with enormous and growing non-Jewish support as well, which, had it been supported rather than undercut by major Jewish organizations, could very well have toppled Hitler from power by the spring of 1934. Not only would this have spared 5-6 million Jewish lives, it would have spared another 45 million or so non-Jewish lives lost in the Nazi holocaust. I once believed like many that the Holocaust led to the fulfillment of Zionism; this book shows rather that it was the fulfillment of Zionism which led to the Holocaust. And it was all for nought. Israel would still have come into being and moreover would have had several million extra potential immigrants to draw from. This book is all about a simply horrific wordwide catastrophe that resulted from an incredibly BAD choice based on ethnic nationalism, and it is made instead to appear as merely a somewhat sordid chapter re. a road to nationhood that featured a few nasty bumps along the way. Mind-boggling!
Book Description
A rite of passage, a defining event, a catalyst of musical and personal epiphanies--a concert is an experience unlike any other.
In The Show I'll Never Forget, writer Sean Manning has gathered an amazing array of unforgettable concert memories from a veritable A-list of acclaimed novelists, poets, biographers, cultural critics, and songwriters. Their candid, first-person recollections reveal as much about the writers' lives at the time as they do about the venues where the shows occurred or the artists onstage.
Ishmael Reed on Miles Davis
Luc Sante on Public Image Ltd.
Heidi Julavits on Rush
Daniel Handler and Andrew Sean Greer on Metric
Diana Ossana on Led Zeppelin
Maggie Estep on Einstürzende Neubauten
Dani Shapiro on Bruce Springsteen
Gary Giddins on Titans of the Tenor!
Nick Flynn on Mink DeVille
Susan Straight on The Funk Festival
Rick Moody on the The Lounge Lizards
Jennifer Egan on Patti Smith
Harvey Pekar on Joe Maneri
Thurston Moore on Glen Branca, Rudolph Grey, and Wharton Tiers
Chuck Klosterman on Prince
Sigrid Nunez on Woodstock
Jerry Stahl on David Bowie
Charles R. Cross on Nirvana
Marc Nesbitt on The Beastie Boys
And many more . . .
No matter where your musical taste falls, these often funny, occasionally sad, always thought-provoking essays--all written especially for The Show I'll Never Forget--are sure to connect with anyone who loves, or has ever loved, live music.
Customer Reviews:
Encore Please!.......2007-09-07
A few years ago I had an idea for a project/blog/zine thing that would involve getting friends of mine to write about their most memorable live music experiences. Since live music was a huge part of our lives from ages 12 on, it seemed like a cool way to reconnect with the past and each other. Of course, school, a baby girl, moving, and all those kinds of things got in the way and that project never got off the ground (yet). So it was a little disconcerting (in a cool way) to stumble across this book in the library, which is basically an anthology with the exact same premise.
Editor Sean Manning has assembled brief essays from fifty writers, covering shows ranging from 1955 (Miles Davis) to 2005 (Metric), by writers ranging from the relatively well known to the relatively obscure, with a few musicians (Thurston Moore being the most famous) added to the mix. Most of the pieces are about shows inside the U.S. (with one each in Belfast, Vancouver, and Madrid), with 19 from New York City alone! Despite the wide range, none of the bands covered are one's I've ever seen live myself, and only three of the shows were ones I really wish I could have been to (Black Flag in '79, The Pogues in '86, and The Beastie Boys in '87).
In any event, I dipped in and out of the book and found most of what I read exceedingly compelling. Writing about music is hard, and most people fail to capture the essence of what makes our favorite music so vitals. Here, most of the contributors focus on the event, capturing the full experience, rather than trying to lamely recount how masterful a particular performance was. What is really nice is that a number of the pieces are about how a show was memorable for how bad it was (such as Lynn Tillman's account of phoned-in set by the bored Rolling Stones in '65 or Luc Sante's account of seeing P.I.L. at the Ritz in '81). Along the same lines is Jon Raymond's evocative account of a 1989 Bon Jovi concert to which he'd gotten free tickets, gotten tanked with his Replacements/Husker-Du-listening teenage friends, and gotten kicked out of almost immediately.
And then there are plenty of just flat-out well written essays. Pop culture maven Chuck Klosterman kind of phones in his first Prince concert -- but even when phoned in, Klosterman is wittier than 99% of writers out there. There's David Gates on being a white dude going to see James Brown play Boston Garden the day after Martin Luther King was assassinated. There's Diana Ossana breaking out of a three-year depression after being cajoled to a '73 Led Zepplin show. There's teenage Tracey Chevalier's introduction to the theater of the arena concert (and adult life in general) at a '77 Capital Center show by Queen. There's Susan Straight in the midst of 100,000 at the L.A. Coliseum for the 1979 Funk Festival with Parliament.
But probably my favorite piece is Marc Nesbit's account of an '87 show at the Capital Center featuring Junkyard (a legendary go-go band), Public Enemy, and the Beastie Boys. Part of the appeal is the personal connection -- I'm pretty much the same age as Nesbit, had the same high-school experience, and similarly, had zero chance (in those days) of seeing live go-go. But what really elevates the piece is his humor and ability to describe the audience' stunned and confused reaction to a then-unknown Public Enemy, including this line, which had tears of laughter rolling down my face: "Flavor Flav made his entrance, dancing in weird spastic steps like a marionette monkey while screaming rhyming gibberish that was supposed to rile the crowd, inform them of how in effect Public Enemy was, and issue bizarre threats to unnamed enemies who wished to defeat them -- all at the same time.
There are a few duds here and there, but on the whole, if live music was or is important to you -- this book is worth your time. As for me, I'm off to get that zine/blog thing off the ground.
"The Show I'll Never Forget" Does Not Disappoint.......2007-05-25
I bought this book looking to hear about great concerts that happened before I was born ... the ones you always hear about in that Man-I-Wish-I-Was-There sort of way.
Out of the 50 concert-going experiences, there were probably only 5 that I did not enjoy reading. The rest was either good, really good or amazing re-readable material.
For the most part, it doesn't get into the concert itself, with the workings of the set lists or whatnot ... rather it gives the emotional and background aspects of the concert goer before during and after. There were quite a lot of ultimate nirvana moments -- that moment where nothing could feel better, and those feelings jump right off the page and hit you. You become absorbed into the writer's story, placing yourself with the other people places and emotions.
A great read. For anyone who knows about music, wants to know about music, enjoys collections of short writings from various authors ... this is a great book. That's another thing, you get so many different writing styles and voices, it's a great book.
anyone should buy it -- except for a couple of passages, nothing that should keep this away from young readers, either.
Not so much "remember when" as "remember us"..........2007-03-22
Shows that stick in our minds, decades after the fact, are so interwoven with who and where we were at the time--and why we couldn't breathe-- that it's hard to tease apart each element. That's why words like these from John Albert, musing on his then-15 year old self (and Black Flag) in the late 70's ring so true: "I love punk rock but know it is a fantasy. We are not in England. I am not poor. It is not raining. I can relate to the rebellion and anger in the music, and sometimes try to imagine we are in London, but it's difficult. The sun is too bright and there is silence all around. Each night, I sit on the curb outside my parents' house and listen to the sound of cars passing in the distance. There is a growing panic inside me. I can't shake the thought that somewhere else there is something profound and exciting happening--and I'm missing it all." Hoo boy.
A theatre kid who just made the varsity cut, shows up at a Kinks show in a tux for the last time. A closet Prince fan who comes to worship blindly at the Elfin Temple in--of all places--Fargo. A college girl dodges bullets at a Funk show starring George Clinton, who, after James Brown (also profiled here), must have been "the hardest working man in show business". And Jerry Stahl, newly off junk and still jumpy, gets a congratulatory hug from David Bowie (I always knew he was cool). You'll find yourself there amongst the geeks and stoners, the disaffected and the conforming, the used-dental floss that's that wretched in-between time when being alive doesn't seem so fun anymore.
There aren't many shows later than Beck here, but that's because it takes a while for adulthood to process the neural storm that is the past. I found myself warmed all over by this book, and musical taste be damned. Listen to Robert Polito:
"Earlier that evening, in one of those flukes that promises more than the moment can deliver, we ran into The Pogues, at least some of them, across the street at Fenway Park. The Red Sox were playing the Toronto Bluejays..."
I can't think of a better definition of being young than "a fluke that promises more than it can deliver". The music itself isn't so much an afterthought as the aural soup through which we navigate those years. But if you're interested, there are reviews of shows by the Stones, the Beatles, Led Zep, Miles Davis, the very young Beasties, Metric, Public Image, Van Morrison, the Mekons, Lou Reed, White Stripes (okay, I was wrong about Beck), a wonderful Ishmael Reed review of a Miles Davis show from the 50's, and lots of others for people who still think music can set our experiences UNIQUELY apart from the drek that is "everybody else". For those who know it's all a part of being human, bring your lighter.
Insightful, sometimes funny, thought-provoking essays .......2007-03-06
Unforgettable concert memories have been revealed in numerous sources, from magazine articles to biographies and the works of literary writers: here they're gathered under one cover to prove a powerful collection of insights from those who observed Patti Smith, Led Zeppelin, Miles Davis, Rush, and more in concert. The musical genres are diverse here and range from rock to classical, but these insightful, sometimes funny, thought-provoking essays have all been written especially for THE SHOW I'LL NEVER FORGET and are vivid recollections for both general-interest public libraries and specialty music collections alike.
Personal Views on Fifty Concerts.......2007-02-18
A very simple premise for a book. The author asked fifty writers: 'What was the best concert you ever saw?'
The results vary, as you would expect. The book grabbled me when flipping through I saw that one authors favorite show was one put on by Kevin Spacey. Kevin Spacey? A Concert? Yes. Keven Spacey's an actor, not even a first line actor -- until you see him in 'The Usual Suspects.' Turns out that he is also a singer, using his own voice in the Bobby Darin bio. Max Collins writes a great report of Kevin Spacey singing Bobby Darin.
The other fifty articles vary. Some are on artists I simply don't care about. Some are funny, some are very sad. They are all told in the first person -- 'This is a show I went to see, and it affected me.'
A very enjoyable read to anyone who follows the music scene.
Average customer rating:
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Women as Hamlet: Performance and Interpretation in Theatre, Film and Fiction
Tony Howard
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 General
| Theater
| Performing Arts
| Arts & Photography
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| Books
History & Criticism
| Theater
| Performing Arts
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Performing Arts
| Arts & Photography
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General
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Shakespeare
| British
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ASIN: 0521864666 |
Book Description
The first Hamlet on film was Sarah Bernhardt. Probably the first Hamlet on radio was Eve Donne. Ever since the late eighteenth century, leading actresses have demanded the right to play the role - Western drama’s greatest symbol of active consciousness and conscience. Their iconoclasm, and Hamlet’s alleged ‘femininity’, have fascinated playwrights, painters, novelists and film-makers from Eugène Delacroix and the Victorian novelist Mary Braddon to Angela Carter and Robert Lepage. Crossing national and media boundaries, this book addresses the history and the shifting iconic status of the female Hamlet in writing and performance. Many of the performers were also involved in radical politics: from Stalinist Russia to Poland under martial law, actresses made Hamlet a symbol of transformation or crisis in the body politic. On stage and film, women reinvented Hamlet from Weimar Germany to the end of the Cold War. This book aims to put their half-forgotten achievements centre-stage.
Book Description
An ancient mystical experience, the Vision Quest was undertaken by Native Americans as an odyssey of self-knowledge and fulfillment--a spiritual journey into the wilderness and the soul. In this classic account of the relationship between man and nature, America's most famous outdoorsman reveals the secrets of this profoundly moving ritual.
Customer Reviews:
life changing.......2007-10-10
This book it truely incredible. It will make your re-evaluate your life and the way you live it. I think everyone should read this book at least once, if not once every year, just to get grounded again. A definate must buy!
This is the way to do do business.......2007-01-19
I am thrilled with how fast the book arrived and the excellent condition it is in. Will definitely buy from this seller again.
Tom Brown's "The Vision..." doesn't disappoint.......2006-07-16
As a long time Tom Brown fan, The Vision: The Dramatic True Story of One Man's Search for Enlightenment, keeps with the spirit of the previous works I have read. It is my feeling the author has a true message he wishes to impart on our society, one that leads to a better understanding of our relationship with nature and life itself.
This book delves into the author's message of a return to a intimate relation with nature and putting our lives on a natural path of harmony with the planet on which we live and must share with all living entities.
You will not be disappointed in the message, and the paths opened leading one to a better understanding of the way to achieve these goals. I highly recommend this work to anyone seeking these truths.
Completely Amazing.......2000-06-27
This book is simply incredible. Having read "Grandfather" and "The Tracker" before this book, I found myself on an incredible journey through the Vision Quest. I found that it deepened my desire to do as Tom Brown, Jr. has done. The Vision Quest in the cave towards the end was absolutely amazing. It is probably best to read at least "The Tracker" before this one, but it's not totally necessary. A must read at any rate.
Worth Re-reading.......2000-03-13
I have read this book twice now, I enjoyed and learnt it both times. Better the the previous two books, in 'The Vision' Tom goes deeper into his personal spirituality. The book takes you through many of Tom's life lessons building nicely into where the later books will take you. It is the kind of book where you will find something covered which will add insight to your current life circumstances.
Book Description
Who says only the British can act Shakespeare? In this unique guide, a veteran acting coach shatters that myth with a boldly American approach to the Bard. Written in the form of a play, this volume's "characters" include a master teacher and 16 students grappling with the challenges of acting Shakespeare. Using actual speeches from 32 of Shakespeare's plays, each of the book's six "scenes" offer proven solutions to such acting problems as delivering spoken subtext, using physical actions to orchestrate a speech, creating images within a speech, dividing a speech into measures, and much more.
Customer Reviews:
Masterful.......2006-05-15
This is a great book for actors because it intelligently draws connections between what you already know and what you need to know. The workshop-style format in which it's written veryh insightful into the thought and exploring processes of finding the meat of Shakespeare's characters. As an actor, I highly recommend it for anyone who is serious about the Bard.
Masterful!.......2005-08-27
Jacalyn Royce, in Shakespeare Bulletin, Volume 22, Number 4, said this about Mastering Shakespeare:
"Mastering Shakespeare places Kaiser in the company of John Barton, Cecily Berry, and Patsy Rodenburg: master teachers who have applied scholarship and practicality to develop methods through which contemporary actors can achieve lucid and physically honest performances of early modern characters-and written smart, inspiring, and useful books about the process.
Back Stage West Review.......2005-01-25
A review of this book, written by Jean Schiffman, appeared in Back Stage West in May of 2004. Here in an excerpt:
"Scott Kaiser, Oregon Shakespeare Festival acting coach, has come out with an eminently readable new book: Mastering Shakespeare: An Acting Class in Seven Scenes (Allworth Press). Constructed like a play set in an acting studio, it's both entertaining and instructive. Kaiser presents a Stanislavsky-based rehearsal method that he dubs "orchestration." Devised over years of teaching, this approach to on-your-feet script analysis demystifies Shakespeare and makes the acting of his plays seem downright accessible....Kaiser illuminates the whole art of acting Shakespeare, from clown to king, in a way that's sure to appeal to many heretofore intimidated American actors."
-Back Stage West, feature article by Jean Schiffman, May 20, 2004
Packed with important insights.......2004-05-03
Scott Kaiser's text covering fundamental issues in acting Shakespeare draws on both drama and literary basics, revealing a method whereby contemporary young actors can hone their art of Shakespeare plays. From pronunciation and focal points to learning how to 'speak a score' to an audience, Mastering Shakespeare is packed with important insights.
Actors, Teachers, Students: Buy this Book!.......2004-02-18
This book is so useful! As an actor graduating with my MFA in May, I have already successfully used the tools outlined in this book for auditions, scene work and in performance. The information is fresh, clear and really accessible. I would recommend this book for actors of all levels, as well as for teachers looking for simple, practical advice to offer their students working on Shakespeare.
Average customer rating:
- Listening for the Music in Shakespeare's Plays
- Great sourcebook--with a grain of salt
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Shakespeare's Songbook
Ross W. Duffin
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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Similar Items:
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Shakespeare's Songbook, Vols. 1 & 2
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Songs and Dances from Shakespeare
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Shakespeare Songs
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Singing Early Music: The Pronunciation of European Languages in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance (Music--Scholarship and Performance)
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The Dances of Shakespeare
ASIN: 0393058891 |
Book Description
A remarkable work that recovers the songs Shakespeare's audiences actually heard and brings them to life through performance.
Shakespeare lovers have long lamented that so few songs in his plays survive with original music; of about sixty song lyrics, only a handful have come down to us with musical settings. For over 150 years, scholars have aspired—without success—to fill that gap. In Shakespeare's Songbook, Ross W. Duffin does just that.
Eight years in the making, Shakespeare's Songbook is a meticulously researched collection of 160 songs—ballads and narratives, drinking songs, love songs, and rounds—that appear in, are quoted in, or alluded to in Shakespeare's plays. Drawing substantially on the unmatched resources of the Folger Shakespeare Library, Duffin brings complete lyrics (many newly recovered) and music notation together for the first time, and in the process sheds new light on Shakespeare's dramatic art. With performances by leading early-music singers and instrumentalists, the accompanying audio CD brings the songbook to life. Shakespeare's Songbook is the perfect gift for lovers of Shakespeare and an invaluable reference for singers, actors, directors, and scholars. 49 illustrations, 500 music examples.
Customer Reviews:
Listening for the Music in Shakespeare's Plays.......2006-06-21
It is with pleasure that I recommend Ross Duffin's Shakespeare's Songbook. Foregrounding the musical allusions in Shakespeare's plays, Duffin asks us to radically re-conceive our understanding of the Elizabethan experience of attending plays. By demonstrating how Shakespeare at times cites, at other times extracts the popular music of his time, Duffin makes a compelling case for Shakespearean plays as multimedia events. While we think of a play as a series of acts comprised solely of spoken dialogue, Duffin shows us how Shakespeare uses musical excerpts and allusions to ballads and other "pop music" of his day in order to amplify his meaning. Duffin's findings suggest that the Elizabethan experience of going to a play would be akin to our experience of watching a film like Moulin Rouge, which cuts and pastes our pop music into a narrative. (Except, of course, that Shakespeare did it so much better!) Part of what makes this book so amazing is that Duffin has reconstructed tunes and songs to which Shakespeare only alludes! The companion CD allows us to get a taste of what the music would have sounded like--performed, I might add, on period instruments!
I do want to clarify something mentioned in the previous review. The writer ends by noting, "the authors have definitely opened the book on the subject of Shakespeare's music." Perhaps this is a typo, but there are no authors (plural). Ross Duffin is the author. Perhaps the reviewer doesn't understand that someone (in this case, Stephen Orgel) could write the foreword for a book without being its author. At any rate, clarification is in order.
This book has changed how I think about and teach Shakespeare. I hope that directors and actors take it up, so that they can return at least some of the music to Shakespeare's plays.
Great sourcebook--with a grain of salt.......2004-05-03
Ross Duffin has performed a mighty feat--coming up with pre-composed music for all the Shakespeare lyrics--including some never before published. This is a wonderful resource and a great starting point for anyone who wants to understand the musical references in Shakespeare's plays, and also for anyone who wants to use period music for actual productions.
That said, there are many traps for the unwary. Duffin has, at the same time, cast his net too widely and too narrowly. He has taken the reasonable step of starting by looking for printed ballads with similar verse patterns to Shakespeare lyrics and then finding which of those ballad tunes that seems to fit the Shakespeare verse the best. This can make for anomalies, however: so often, the best fit is either "Robin Goodfellow," also known as "Dulcina," or "Goddesses." This in spite of the fact that both these tunes seem to originate rather late for the purpose: the first surviving example of "Dulcina," and also the first written record of its existence, dates from 1615, five years after Shakespeare retired from the theather, and "Goddesses" dates from 1650 or thereabouts. Duffin generously acknowledge these facts in each individual case. But he uses both these tunes far too often in the collection as a whole, given their tenuous existence in Shakespeare's own day. Some other suggested tunes also seem to date from much later.
The idea that most of these verses would have been sung to ballad tunes also seems far too simplistic, given what we know of the variety of theatrical songs in general that survive from this period, songs such as the anonymous "Have you seen but the white lily grow," as well as the works of Robert Johnson and theatrical viol consort songs such as "The dark is my delight." It seems extremely unlikely, for example, that several lines before singing Robert Johnson's setting of "Full fathom five" at the opening of _The Tempest_, that Ariel would have sung "Come unto these yellow sands" to a ballad tune instead of to another song by Robert Johnson that happens not to survive. Or that "Full fathom five" would be used three different times in one play, never mind that it's hard to imagine that a character who is enough of a lowlife to sing "The captain, the swabber, the boatswain and I" would even know such a refined and sophisticated melody to to which to set it. My personal suggestions would be "Heigh ho the cramp" for "I shall no more to sea" and "Sellenger's Round" for "The captain, the swabber. . ."
Duffin was occasionally guilty of picking tunes that fit the words awkwardly at best, such as "While you here do snoring lie" from _The Tempest_ to "The Hunt is Up," or using primarily instrumental tunes such as "Nutmings and Ginger," which contain awkward rhythms for singing English, creating word patterns that resembl neither pre-composed vocal music nore surviving folk song. And at least once, he failed to read the stage directions closely, which resulted in actually ommitting text from the song--in this case, Caliban's song in _The Tempest_, which he begins with the words "No more dams I'll lay for fish." According to the stage directions, the song actually begins with the line, "Farewell, master, farewell, farewell." With the first line restored, the song fits very well to another tune known as "Night piece, or "The Shaking of the Sheets." (For anyone interested to hunt up this one, see _The British Broadside Ballad and its Music_ by Claude M. Simpson or _Old English Popular Music_ by William Chappell.) Granted, the first line is not italicised in the First Folio, but neither is the first line of the "Farewell, dear heart" sequence from _Tweltfh Night_, which is obviously meant to be sung, since it is the first line of the tune that the drunkards use for their banter.
Also, Duffin suggests "Where griping griefs" as a tune for a couple of songs aside from the original in _Romeo and Juliet_, but offers no written-out accompaniment, which renders the tune impractical. It contains leaps of a dminished octave, which would be rather awkward for actors who haven't had extensive musical training (or even many singers who have) to manage alone.
To sum up, the authors have definitely opened the book on the subject of Shakespeare's music--but they haven't closed it.
Book Description
The story of Katherina and her marriage to Petruchio has been popular in the theater for four centuries, but the joke of taming an unruly woman has long been growing increasingly controversial. This edition examines how theater directors and performers have explored the complexities of Katherina's story and that of Christopher Sly, the poor man whose story frames hers. It surveys productions in the English-speaking world, reviewing precise details of the stage action in a social and political context.
Download Description
The story of Katherina and her marriage to Petruchio has been popular in the theater for four centuries, but the joke of taming an unruly woman has long been growing increasingly controversial. This edition examines how theater directors and performers have explored the complexities of Katherina's story and that of Christopher Sly, the poor man whose story frames hers. It surveys productions in the English-speaking world, reviewing precise details of the stage action in a social and political context.
Book Description
Walk with Christ through ancient Jerusalem as he encounters the man with the withered hand, John the Baptist, Judas, and four other New Testament characters in this book of dramatic sketches by Nicole Johnson, the Women of Faith dramatist. Nicole uses her talent for storytelling to help us be there with Christ and see the scenes with new eyes and understanding, bringing to life lessons that apply to our modern lives.
Customer Reviews:
Scripture coming to life!.......2007-04-10
Nicole is able to illustrate these encounters from Scripture in very real, modern day terms. They cut to the core of who we are as people and bring to light God as the focus. Great job, Nicole!
Average customer rating:
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From Performance to Print in Shakespeare's England (Redefining British Theatre History)
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1403992282
Release Date: 2006-03-02 |
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