Book Description
Merengue—the quintessential Dominican dance music—has a long and complex history, both on the island and in the large immigrant community in New York City. In this ambitious work, Paul Austerlitz unravels the African and Iberian roots of merengue and traces its growth under dictator Rafael Trujillo and its renewed popularity as an international music.
Using extensive interviews as well as written commentaries, Austerlitz examines the historical and contemporary contexts in which merengue is performed and danced, its symbolic significance, its social functions, and its musical and choreographic structures. He tells the tale of merengue's political functions, and of its class and racial significance. He not only explores the various ethnic origins of this Ibero-African art form, but points out how some Dominicans have tried to deny its African roots.
In today's global society, mass culture often marks ethnic identity. Found throughout Dominican society, both at home and abroad, merengue is the prime marker of Dominican identity. By telling the story of this dance music, the author captures the meaning of mass and folk expression in contemporary ethnicity as well as the relationship between regional, national, and migrant culture and between rural/regional and urban/mass culture. Austerlitz also traces the impact of migration and global culture on the native music, itself already a vibrant intermixture of home-grown merengue forms.
From rural folk idiom to transnational mass music, merengue has had a long and colorful career. Its well-deserved popularity will make this book a must read for anyone interested in contemporary music; its complex history will make the book equally indispensable to anyone interested in cultural studies.
Customer Reviews:
AY COMPAY! DON'T MISS THIS!.......2001-04-26
Up in Manhattan's Morningside Heights and its Dominican analogs all over the US, salsa is edged out by the magnificently manic beat of the merengue, whether stirred into Dominican rap and house (the most original as well as the least known versions of the genre) or in the tear-em-down accordion of Fefita La Grande. Austerlitz has all this and a lot more, all the way from the luckless Toma' back in the 1840s (read the book!)Austerlitz covers merengue from rural to hi-society in all its fierce joviality. Read this book and you'll know there's one good thing Trujillo did for the Dominican Republic!
John Storm Roberts
An Important Addition to the Library of Any Merengue Fan.......2000-04-25
If you are looking for a quick yet thorough coverage of this topic then this is the book for you. It is a relatively short book, coming in at 167 pages (not including bibliography but including notes section), yet it covers the whole spectrum of the national music of the Dominican Republic.
Mr Austerlitz covers the beginnings of this music all the way through to its current state. It also spends time on Merengue's development during the Trujillo era (a particularly interesting topic to anyone who studies the Dominican Republic).
Mr Austerlitz also does a good job of addressing the sociological issues that arise from music and manages to blend well the merengue of the campo with that of the salon.
A good read and it even comes with a CD with some very good campo (country) merengue. If you are looking for merengue at its roots then this CD should please you.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1.Introduction
PART 1: THE HISTORY OF MERENGUE 1854-1961. 2. Nineteenth-Century Caribbean Merengue. 3. Merengue Cibaeno, Cultural Nationalism, and Resistance. 4. Music and the State: Merengue during the Era of Trujillo, 1930-1961.
PART 2: The Contemporary Era, 1961-1995. 5. Merengue in the Transnational Community. 6. Innovation and Social Issues in Pop Merengue. 7. Merengue on the Global Stage. 8. Enduring Localism. 9. Conclusion
Let me know if you found this useful.
Great Overview of Merengue.......1999-04-08
Enjoyed the insight into the history of Merengue and its cultural context. This book has a place on my bookshelf along with "The Latin Tinge" and "The Brazilian Sound."
Amazon.com
If the mark of a great novel is that it creates its own world, drawing in the reader with its distinctive rhythms and reverberations, then W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz may be the first great novel of the new century. An unnamed narrator, resting in a waiting room of the Antwerp rail station in the late 1960s, strikes up a conversation with a student of architecture named Austerlitz, about whom he knows almost nothing. Over the next several years, the narrator often runs into his odd, engaging acquaintance by chance on his travels, until finally, after a gap of two decades, Austerlitz decides to tell the narrator the story of his life and of his search for his origins in wartime Europe. Slow and meditative, relying on the cumulative effect of its sedate, musical prose and its dark subject matter (illuminated here and there with hope), Sebald's novel doesn't overturn the conventions of fiction, but transcends them. It is a love story to history and vanished beauty. Don't let the slow beginning turn you away. Austerlitz takes its time getting off the ground, but is well worth seeing in flight. --Regina Marler
Book Description
Austerlitz, the internationally acclaimed masterpiece by “one of the most gripping writers imaginable” (The New York Review of Books), is the story of a man’s search for the answer to his life’s central riddle. A small child when he comes to England on a Kindertransport in the summer of 1939, one Jacques Aus-terlitz is told nothing of his real family by the Welsh Methodist minister and his wife who raise him. When he is a much older man, fleeting memories return to him, and obeying an instinct he only dimly understands, he follows their trail back to the world he left behind a half century before. There, faced with the void at the heart of twentieth-century Europe, he struggles to rescue his heritage from oblivion.
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In this story of an orphan's quest for his heritage after World War II, Sebald embodies in Austerlitz the universal human search for identity, the struggle to impose coherence on memory, and a struggle complicated by the mind's defenses against trauma.
Customer Reviews:
Familiar Tale But Now Told By An Artist.......2007-09-30
Part of the enjoyment of this book is the discovery of the story, and I would strongly recommend that one skip the reviews and simply read the book and discover yourself what exactly the novel is about, and then read the comments later. I read nothing until I finished the book. It is an interesting novel that I recommend.
I read some of the professional reviews and one claimed that he had never read such a story about a holocaust survivor. That might be true but also it is not true. This might be one of the best fictional stories, but the non-fiction story is not new and many holocaust survivors from Europe are still alive in their seventies and eighties and one can still here their stories first hand. One can visit museums and read numerous non-fiction accounts and see old film. There are many biographies such as Swimming Across: A Memoir by Andrew S. Grove who described the horrors of life in Budapest during the war and his subsequent march across the border to freedom as a youth.
What Sebald has done here is to create a story or novel that has an artistic slant. Without giving away the plot details he uses the vehicle of a voyage of discovery by a man who was sent to the United Kingdom by train in his youth at age five to escape the war. The boy, Austerliz, whose picture is on the front of the hardcover version has a memory block but when he becomes older he returns to discover his past life in Prague and the horrors of his parents' fate.
Sebald tells the story with artistic prose and with in the insertion of photographs. He tries to create an atmosphere where the characteristics of animals and people are blurred and human actions are viewed as animal like set among German efficiency and planning - which he reveals later in the story. He starts off describing animals in captivity and the similarity with people in rail stations - the great stations of Europe. He goes on until the real intent of the plot emerges after 50 to 100 pages. At that point it changes from a philosophical and a wandering story into a compelling read supported with dramatic and artistic prose.
The novel is interesting and the use of photographs is a powerful technique. The book has a number of other interesting literary twists.
Recommend: 5 stars.
European Writing at its Finest.......2007-08-25
There are enough well written reviews here to convince readers of the late Sebald's beauty, lyricism, and dream-like lure as a writer. Austerlitz is in my opinion his most beautiful and profound book, though I've yet to read Vertigo. Simply stated, it's his labour of love, and you will come away from the book an altogether different reader and observer. If you're a diarist or a writer of any sort, I promise you will close this book and return to page one and begin again. His long, beautiful sentences will remind readers of Europeans' old-world sensibility; their sense of history and time and of those who have come before us.
You will see differently .......2007-06-18
Occasionally there appears a writer who makes us see the world in a new way. Sebald is such a writer. He notices and concentrates upon details and aspects of reality which otherwise ordinarily go unobserved. So this book is filled with descriptions of things, of places, of sights, scenes, objects which we in the course of ordinary lives go by barely noticing. Sebald observes with precision and obsession, and is a thorough and systematic recorder of these thinglike aspects of the universe most of us ordinarily ignore.
He is a philosophical writer but not in a formal way, but rather through the presentation of experience in a reflective and meditative way. The story of Jacques Austerlitz which is at the heart of this work is not told in a conventional way. It is told to the narrator of the work who himself has no name no apparent identity no history in a series of meetings. In these meetings the voice of Austerlitz takes over and the telling tone becomes indistinguishable from that of the narrator. This does not seem to make any difference, in much the same way as the absence of a certain kind of ordinary expression of close feeling seems to make no difference.
For the tale is told as travelogue as essay in memory in a kind of detached manner, a manner which reflects the relation to life of Austerlitz himself and Sebald also. Sebald is a German writer born in 1944 who first saw his father at the age of three, when the father returned from being a war prisoner. The father had served in the Wehrmacht and would remain estranged from Sebald. Sebald's grandfather was the male figure in his life. When in his teens Sebald was shown in school a film of the concentration camp Belsen and this totally shocked him, and estranged him from the ordinary German life he saw around him. He would later make his adopted country England his home, though he makes clear that even in East Anglia where he taught German Literature for many years he was never at home.
The shock of the past and the reality of the past, and the past never being past are all central in Sebald's work . Thus the hero of this work Jacques Austerlitz a child sent at the age of four from the family home in Prague on the Kindertransport to England is adopted by a Welsh childless couple and raised in a remote world where he too never feels at home. The story of his life in Wales and then at school are prelude to his tracing of his family , and his meeting again with his Czech nursemaid, the woman who closely remembers his parents. Austerlitz tells the tale of tracing the life of his actress mother who eventually was interned at Theirenstadt, and his socialist- activist father who disappeared after the Nazi roundups of Jews in France.
But in this work the story is only one element in the whole literary construction, a construction whose atmosphere and feeling, and again way of seeing things are so unique and singular.
Here is a small taste of the prose which will give some feeling of the work, though certainly not encompass wholly its descriptive and reflective richness. Austerlitz speaks of losing his power to write.
"If language may be regarded as an old city full of streets and squares nooks and crannies , ith some quarters dating far back in times while others have been torn down, clearned up and rebuilt, and with suburbs reaching futher and further into the surrounding country, then I was like a man who has been abroad a long time and cannot find his way through the urban sprawl any more, no longer knows what a bus stop is for , or what a back yard is, or a street junction, or an avenue , or a bridge."
This is writing in which enormous knowledge from many areas( with great focus on the architectural and photographic, the visual) and enormous intelligence are continually constructing large complicated sentence structures which flow as one long paragraph-less perceptual- narrative.
I read many books and have read many many in my life, and this is one of those which made me understand that I have been walking around all my life and not seeing much of the world right here before my eyes.
Tremendous. Unforgettable........2007-03-25
This is one of the best books I have ever read.
It tells the story of a man who goes in quest of his beginnings. In search of some clues as to the identity of his birth parents. I loved the story, on many levels. But I do think that much of my fascination with it comes down to the emphasis in the book on the relationship between the realms of being dead and alive... I mean, this Austerlitz guy thinks a lot along the same lines as I do on this issue of the dead not being really dead (as in, annihilated). I have always felt that we will never be more alive, than when we are dead.
As he says, "When space becomes too cramped, the dead, like the living, move out into less densely populated districts where they can rest at a decent distance from each other."
Ah... there is a ton of this kind of stuff in the novel. And I won't go on about it, because it's so spooky and weird, and really, I am highly recommending here that you read the novel yourself.
It is a book about time, and more specifically, about continuity. The irretrievable aspect of the past.
Disjunction.
Being "cut off from the past and the future" (p.101) we have only the present.
But, if we have only the present, we are disconnected. Austerlitz (the character) says he feels that no matter what he talks about, it arouses in him "a sense of disjunction" (p.109). His sense of time is so other-worldly that he doesn't even bother to own a clock! For Austerlitz, the past is not "fixed." He says, "Past events have not yet occurred but are waiting to do so at the moment when we think of them."
This is why when he pictures the possible re-appearance of his parents, they are not at their actual current chronological age, but at a sort-of perfect optimal age ("mid-thirties at the most") p.185. There are laws governing the return of the past (recollection) but "we don't understand them."
I love ruminating upon the kind of things that Sebald loved writing about. [Sadly, Sebald died in a car accident on Dec.14, 2001].
I feasted on Austerlitz!
For those of you who have looked at his books, you will know that Sebald uses black and white photographs as reference points in his work. It is fabulous. Pictures that always have just enough mystery locked into them that you find yourself staring and not knowing why you continue to do so. They contain just enough nuance to not really answer anything, and yet they add to the storyline and aid in the overall emotive quality... you feel the pictures.
A tremendous, unforgettable book!
A brief tale with heart in the style of Proust.......2007-03-17
The writing in this short novel is rather elegant and like Proust there are triggers throughout the course of the tale which drive the narrator back into time like Proust's madeleine tea cake. This phenomenon of time's recall means that time isn't really lost at all but can be regained and life can be relived. When the days of recollection are fond ones, then this recall is a blessing but when the time regained is catastrophic like the dark days of the Holocaust, then time regained is a curse. This novel is written like a memoir, again like Proust, and takes the readers through the childhood of young adopted Austerlitz. He is fascinated by structure and architecture in particular and finds beauty and meaning in much reminiscence like Proust. The syntax is long and elegant with the sentences flowing seamlessly together into one fluid river just like, well, Proust, again. It's difficult to know for sure whether to credit the writer or the translator for the elegance of phrasing in this book but the writing is definitely a pleasure to read. Essentially, this novel assumes the memoir style, syntax, message and philosophy of time of Proust and frames them all within a small window formatted for the busy lives and short attention spans of mainstream readers and then focuses its leitmotif upon the Holocaust. While it's good to see elegant writing so widely read, I would recommend that you read the source of all this writing: Proust. Begin with the first book of La Recherche du Temps Perdu and keep reading. If you were to do so, then your brief venture with Austerlitz would prove genuinely worthwhile.
Customer Reviews:
Napoleon and Austerlitz: An Unprecedentedly Detailed Combat Study of Napoleon's Epic Ulm-Austerlitz Campaign of 1805.......2007-01-19
The best Napoleonic book that I have read in years! Scott Bowden has done it again. He has provided the serious Napoleonic student with one of the best books on strategic and tactical history of perhaps Napoleon's great campaign. I recommend this book to all interested in Napoleonic history. I must have!
Best English language study of Napoleon and Austerlitz.......2003-04-30
Having read everything I can on Napoleon's 1805 Ulm-Austerlitz campaigns, I have to rank this work as the best. The details about the organization and tactics of the armies, combined with the specifics of the Ulm and the Austerlitz campaigns which include the very detailed tactical description of the fighting (especially the combats around Ulm) simply cannot be found anywhere else. What's more, the text is complimented by a great number of maps and artwork, making the layout what I wish every military history book looked like. It is a splendid work that deserves inclusion in any Napoleonic library.
Oh, yes...a word about some of the "hit reviews" previously posted. I, too, have a copy of Sutterheim's 1807 English TRANSLATED piece on Austerlitz, and Scott Bowden is absolutely correct in his citation. Also, I had an opportunity to hear the author when he spoke in Hawai'i in 2002, and one of those talks included, in part, a detailed presentation on Napoleon. In that presentation, I saw a lot of the archival documents used by the author in putting together NAPOLEON AND AUSTERLITZ---documents that others making "hit reviews" say he never possessed. That speaks volumes about the credibility of those who posted those remarks.
JS
Fine book........2001-07-17
Bowden's Austerlitz is a fine book and I recommed it to everyone. Although author is rather anti-Russian his book is very good. After all he titled it "Napoleon and Austerlitz" and not "Tsar Alexander and Austerlitz". Right ?
The amount of information is breath-taking, the maps are excellent and extremaly detailed showing even the positions of individual battalions and squadrons. This is hard to find in other books where one see only very general positions of troops, and only positions of armies and corps and divisions.
The amount of illustrations and their quality is fascinating !
Interesting reading with a strong bias against Russians.......2001-07-05
When I read on page 101 a capton "Ochakov - another Suvorov's victory" I thought for a moment that it was a little mistake that could be found even at best-researched books. Suvorov was present at the siege of the fortress under command of prince Potyomkin, but did not take part in the final storm of Ochakov in December 1788 being severely wounded in a Turkish sortie. Author defenitely mistook the storm of Ochakov with the storm of another strong Turkish fortress - Izmail, which was a really great Suvorov's victory. But as read the book more I understood that it was not a chance mistake, because Mr.Bowden demonstrated a lack of knowledge of Russian military history, and a lot of false statements proved it. Just one example - he stated, that Emperor Paul disbanded all jager units of the Russian Army and there remained only several companies. It's just not true, because in 1797 Paul reorganised ten jager corps he inherited from the Catherine the Great (each corps consisted of four battalions) into twenty small regiments. When explaining the reason for ferocity of Russian soldiers Mr.Bowden says it was the heritage of wars with Turkey and "take-no-prisoners" nature of that wars. False statement again - there were excessions in wars of XVII - early XVIII centures, but in later conflicts (wars of 1768-74 and 1787-91) excessins were rare. One example - many Turks, taken prisoner in the 1787-91 war, served at Russian galleys at the Baltic and were decorated for the bravery in actions against Sweden. And only as bad-tasted jokes can be described stories of Inspector of Russian artillery Arakcheev with his hands cutting heads of his unfortunate officers, burying them alive etc. Such anecdotes were very good for XVIII centure propaganda, but in a XXI century historic research they look rather misplaced. Generally speaking, Mr.Bowden gives his readers a picture in the "French heroes against Russian hordes" style. Historians can have their preferences, but solid works shoud not be such one-sided. Author preferred to forget (or may be ignorant of) that in 1799 Russian Army soundly defeated French armies in Italy. In that campaign with great distinction fought the same regiments that fought in 1805 - Apsheron, Butyrsk, Ryazan, Novgorod musketeers, and much maligned by Bowden Russian jagers outfought French infantry in every aspect. I'd like to ask Mr.Bowden a question - if the Russian Army was so bad as he described, how come that just in a year when Russians and French met on the battlefield again, just the same French Army after several months of bitter fighting failed to produce another Austerlitz and had a victory only after a fatal blunder by Russian C-in-C, Hanoverian mercenary Bennigsen at Friedland? "General Winter" again? Definetly not. Russian army had many faults, but it was not a band of bad-disciplined savages, led by ignorant officers as Mr.Bowden tries to convince us.
Poorly researched.......2001-05-10
This book is one of the poorest books on the Napoleonic period to be published for a long time. It is written on the basis of original archival research and the preface tells us that the principal primary sources were 193 cartons of material from the French archives, from which he identifies individual documents. In the context of the allies he alludes to the Austrian Kriegsarchiv, unidentified "smaller archival collections throughout Germany", and "an extensive collection of regimental histories in the Russian army archives", which we are told are "in Saint Petersberg". On close examination, however, it is impossible to identify a single original allied source.
Chapter II to Part II describes the Russian army in 1805 and on p96 we are told that there were four standing armies. The footnote refers to Duffy's Russia's Military Way to the West p126. This actually describes a 1777 proposal by Count Aleksandrovich Rumyantsev, which was never adopted.
On pp98-99 we are given the strength of a Russian infantry battalion as "738 combatants". Turning to the reference in the footnote, von Stein's Geschichte des Russischen Heeres Vol1 p245, there are some tables to be found, but this part of Stein is concerned with the maintenance costs of various units in 1802, and 738 is actually the pay in roubles received by a lieutenant colonel in the dragoons and hussars.
On p100 Bowden discusses the composition of the Russian guard infantry. Using Stein as the source again, he alludes to an organization extant during the reign of Paul I. The page indicated in Stein contains nothing whatever to substantiate the assertion that a guard infantry regiment comprised two battalions of musketeers and one of grenadiers, or that the grenadier battalion was detached from each to form a three battalion `Guard Grenadier' regiment in the field. The `Guard Grenadier' regiment he refers to is nothing of the sort and is, in fact, the Leib-Grenadier regiment, the senior regiment of the line.
Chapter III to Part II dealing with the Austrians is more of the same.
On p124 footnote 15 refers to Gallina's Beiträge zur Geschichte des österreichischen Heerwesens, a work published in 1872, specifically `Suggestions for the drill and Evolutions of Foot'. Gallina wrote in German and no part of his work was given an English title; except by Gunther Rothenberg in his The Archduke Charles and the Austrian Army 1792-1814, at footnote 22 to p87.
There is even more compelling evidence of poaching from secondary sources on p324. In his account of the attack on Telnitz by Kienmayer, which he footnotes as coming from Stutterheim. Bowden has the 2nd Szeklers supported by the 1st Szeklers and Border (sic) Croats. Duffy, also using Stutterheim in his 1977 Austerlitz 1805, says the same thing, including the typograhical error that has the Broder Croats as the `Border' Croats.
Examination of Stutterheim, however, shows that the Austrian, a primary source who was on the spot, says that Kienmayer committed 1st Szeklers initially and that he then ordered General Carneville to advance with the remainder of his infantry. The remainder of his infantry, therefore, comprising 2nd Szeklers and Broder Croats, supported the 1st Szeklers, and not as Bowden and Duffy have it. The only explanation for this that I can think of is that Bowden copied from Duffy, claiming to have taken it from Stutterheim, but repeated Duffy's error. It could, I suppose, be a simple coincidence that Duffy and Bowden made the same transcription error, some 20 years apart.
On p432 the Soult issue crops up. Soult, it is said, suggested `Duke of Austerlitz' for himself, when titles were being dished out in 1808. Napoleon, apparently, refused him and Bowden deploys two dubious sources to support his contention that Soult did not deserve it. He then goes on to say that the suggestion that Napoleon deprived Soult of
what he was due, is a British plot to make Wellington appear better than he was and adds a gratuitous insult to Paddy Griffiths and David Chandler! This is risible rubbish
The orders of battle should be treated with care. Russian transliterations are a mess, largely Germanic in origin and presumably taken from Stein. In the case of the Austrians, where the numbers have been rounded off, of unclear provenance.
The Biography contains a list of the works which, presumably, were consulted in writing the book. These include Mercer's Journal of the Waterloo Campaign and Bowden's own Armies of Waterloo! On page 525 there is an entry by an author called Derselbe, who apparently wrote Die Schlacht bei Austerlitz. `Derselbe' actually means `the same' or `ditto' in German. The only explanation I can think of is that he has simply lifted the entry from somebody else's bibliography without knowing what it meant. This tends to raise questions about the provenance of large parts of this book and probably explains mistakes in information extracted from German material, such as Stein.
Finally the maps. Absence of scale bars and a compass rose make them useless. This book is badly researched, biased and wrong in so many details that is it just best ignored.
Book Description
With the music video at a historic turning point, caught between its television-fuelled past and a still-unformed Internet future, it is an ideal time to look back at the life of this mutant art form - one that united the two most influential media of the last 50 years.
Money for Nothing begins with the earliest days of the music video, when Hollywood musicals, experimental animated films, Soundies, and Scopitones fused music and image in ways that would presage the eventual form of the MTV clip. By the time A Hard Day's Night was released in 1964, the combination of pop music and short films was ready to sweep the world. It didn't take long for other acts to see the possibilities of promotional films - the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, and Bob Dylan had tried their hand at videos by the end of the 60s. The 1970s brought further rapid development. Artists as diverse as Queen, the Residents, Devo, and Elvis Costello all experimented with the form, establishing the boundaries of the nascent genre. By the time MTV debuted in 1981, the music video was ready for the spotlight. There were artists who construcetd whole careers around it (Madonna, Duran Duran), some who seemed occasionally flummoxed by it (Prince, U2), and those who did their best to subvert it (the Replacements, the Smiths).
In the 1990s, the music video reached its apogee, with enormous blockbuster clips from acts like Guns N'Roses, Michael Jackson, and Aerosmith marking the last moment of the video's cultural centrality. At the same time, the rise of alternative rock and hip-hop ushered in a renewed golden era of video, with big-name directors like Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Hype Williams, and Paul Hunter redefining what a music video could, or should, be.
As MTV and VH1 have morphed into lifestyle channels, the video no longer has the cultural impact it once had, but our era of YouTube and bloggers has revitalized the form, sparking a video resurgence among bands, directors, and fans. Money for Nothing is a smart, informative, and affectionate history that shows artistry and commercialism clashing, fusing, and occasionally creating works of real beauty.
Customer Reviews:
A 'must' for any collection strong in media history.......2007-04-19
MONEY FOR NOTHING: A HISTORY OF THE MUSIC VIDEO FROM THE BEATLES TO THE WHITE STRIPES is a 'must' for any collection strong in media history. Such collections will find the narrowed focus on music videos to be involving: it covers the earliest days of the music video when fusions of animated films, Hollywood musicals and more preceded MTV clips. The blend of pop music and short films fostered by the Beatles would sweep the music world - but had its roots in early Hollywood history. From the development of music-backed promotional films to 1970s alternative experiments with the medium, MONEY FOR NOTHING is packed with insights perfect for college-level media history holdings.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
Never thought I would use the words "thought-provoking" and MTV in the same sentence.......2007-01-29
Austerlitz is an insightful and funny guide through the world of music video, and it's a tour worth taking. I spent a good portion of my adolescence looking on in horror at the flopping fish in Faith No More's "Epic," taking style cues from MC Hammer, and watching the worms crawl around Peter Gabriel's head, but my middle school eyes didn't see much past the flash. For those of you like me who loved it (but maybe didn't get it) the first time around, this book is an eye-opener - as when Austerlitz takes points to the beginnings of music video in WWII "Soundies" - while still holding on to the fun and nostalgia of an afternoon (or maybe a good, solid year) watching VH1. There's plenty in here for cinephile, music geek, or the merely curious. In short: buy it, read it, and enjoy.
Your cortex will thank you.......2007-01-23
The history of music videos is unwritten, even though the appeal of this strange, incandescent art form should be just as oversized for people of all ages as it is for those of us who grew up in the eighties and nineties. Austerlitz is a witty, thoughtful guide who writes with a gentle mix of scholarship and loving irreverence. Read this book no matter who you are--and then go to YouTube and burn his top 100 videos into the back of your brain.
Groundbreaking Work for Music Video Fans.......2007-01-20
As a child of the 80's who grew up in front of MTV, I have been waiting for a book like this to arrive. Music videos have been one of the most innovative and influential forms of media for the last twenty years, but there has been surprisingly little scholarship on the genre.
In that sense, Austerlitz is breaking new ground with this book. He is a savy tour guide for the visual landscape we all share. From the music video's early days, to the hair metal 80's into the ganster 90's, he manages to articulate in witty and insightful prose the nuances and salient features of the genre as a whole, and specific high points in particular.
With the explosion of youtube, and other self produced video formats, its about time we have some serious thinking published on the subject. Austerlitz does just that. At the same time, this is a book for the music video fan. Those of us who remember the glory days of Motley Crue's reign on DIAL-MTV, or that graffiti set of Parents Just Don't Understand, upto the great Guns and Roses triology will be thrilled to hear a wise and equally passionate voice take us back through these videos.
I only hope the sequal will shed some light on Trapped In the Closet.
Book Description
Revealing new study of Napoleon's greatest victory. Dispels many of the myths surrounding the famous battle of the three emperors. Brought to life with numerous eyewitness accounts. A Main Selection for the History Book Club. The Battle of Austerlitz is almost universally regarded as the most impressive of Napoleon's many victories. The magnitude of the French achievement against a significantly larger army was unprecedented. In this insightful new study the author analyses the planning of the opposing forces and details the course of the battle hour by hour, describing the fierce see-saw battle around Sokolnitz, the epic struggle for the Pratzen Heights, the dramatic engagement between the legendary Lannes and Bagration in the north, and the widely misunderstood clash of Napoleon's Imperial Guard and Alexander's Imperial Leib-Guard. The author has produced a detailed and balanced assessment of the battle that for the first time places familiar French accounts in their proper perspective and exposes many myths regarding the battle that have been perpetuated and even embellished in recent books. With 1805: Austerlitz, the reader is left with a new appreciation of Napoleon and his Grande Army of 1805, an army that decisively defeated not a hapless relic of the ancien regime but rather a formidable professional army that had fought the French armies on equal terms five years earlier. Robert Goetz has been studying the Russian Army of the Napoleonic Wars for the past seven years, an area of specialization that emerged from his longstanding interest in the French Revolution and Napoleonic era. He is the author of several award-winning articles concerning the Russian Army and its campaigns.
Customer Reviews:
Not for Napoleon Fans..........2007-09-05
This is a book about how the Allies lost at Austerlitz, not about how Napoleon and the French won. Mr. Goetz does state in his intro that this will be construed as the "Allied version" of events and he wasn't kidding. We get blunder after blunder and the incompetency of command of the Allies in great detail, and the Allied details are great if you're into that sort of thing, but the French accounts are sparse. I wanted to learn how a great battle was won, not lost. I will be buying a different book on Austerlitz to get the taste of defeat which comes with this one out of my mouth.
Greatly detailed depiction of a smashing Napoleonic victory.......2007-01-22
Austerlitz can legitimately be described as one of the greatest of Napoleon Bonaparte's victories. The battle destroyed the coalition among Austrians, Prussians, and Russians. The Holy Roman Empire was finally (and mercifully) terminated. This volume looks at the actual nitty gritty details of the Austerlitz campaign. The author notes that (page 13): "The story of the 1805 Campaign and the stunning victory of Austerlitz is the story of the beginning of the Napoleon of history and the Grande Armee of legend."
Good features of this book: plenty of maps to lay out the progression of events, the order of battle, an estimate of the armies' strengths, an assessment of casualties in both armies. This book is also distinguished by providing great amounts of information from the allies' perspective, rather than just from the French and Napoleonic viewpoint.
The story begins with the start of hostilities between France and her adversaries after the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, which temporarily brought peace to Europe. The volume starts off with an assessment of the strength of the various allied armies as well as the French forces and the early maneuvering of the various forces. The destruction of the incompetently led Austrain forces at Ulm are described well. The Austrian General, Mack, completely failed against Napoleon.
After that defeat, the allies began gathering their troops together to continue the struggle against the French. Russian armies began the march from the motherland. Austrian forces begin to gather. Even Prussia was willing to enter on the side of the allies, although its forces would be unable to participate at Austerlitz.
Once the allies began to gather their horde, the movement of the French and allies began to lead to battle. Both forces ended up gathering near the village of Austerlitz. Napoleon began to develop alternative strategies, contingent upon what the allies did. The prime mover of the allied strategic choices, Weyrother, conceived an attack on the French right, without assuming that Napoleon might not just sit around waiting to be attacked. Indeed, Napoleon had already thought through what he would do if such an attack took place. The logistics of the allied forces moving to the offensive were strained; communication between Austrians and Russians (calling for translation) went awry.
Napoleon launched an attack on the crucial Pratzen Heights. While the fighting was at times fierce, he had hit the Russians when they were unprepared, as they moved to attack Napoleon's right. Once he had control of the Heights, his army had cut the allied forces in two. There begin the attack on the flank and rear of the allies attacking the French right. Things fell apart rapidly. While the Russians fought well, the game was pretty much up. Some allies, such as Bagration, fought well. Others appeared to be stupefied by what was happening. One nice aspect of the concluding discussion is the rating of the various major figures on both sides. Some, like Bagration, come off very well. Others, like Buxhowden, come off badly. Overall, the French leaders appear to have done a better job. As others note, it would have been helpful if there were a bit more information on the leaders as human beings.
In the end, perhaps Napoleon's greatest triumph. This led to a peace agreement that ended to "third coalition" of allies against France.
The book is written in excruciating detail. Keeping units and leaders straight is not easy. On the other hand, the detail provides as clear a sense of this critical battle as anyone could hope for.
What Napoleonic history ought to be!.......2007-01-03
1805: Austerlitz: Napoleon and the Destruction of the Third Coalition
By Robert Goetz
Greenhill Books 2005
368 pages, 20 maps, 40 illustrations, 8 tables, 4 appendices
ISBN 1-85367-644-6
The Battle of Austerlitz was perhaps the greatest of all Napoleon's victories, and seems to have been the battle he was most proud of. Compared, though, with the mountain of books about Waterloo and Trafalgar, it has been rather poorly served. There was a history by Christopher Duffy, which was good, but was rather small, and is somewhat dated now. There was also an Osprey by Ian Castle, which faces the usual limitations of the Osprey format, and a larger but flawed volume by Scott Bowden. Robert Goetz has now stepped forward to provide another account of this dramatic affair.
He begins where every good historian should begin; in the beginning, with the collapse of the Peace of Amiens, and gives good coverage of the formation of the Third Coalition. He gives descriptions of the leaders on both sides, and of the armies that they led, and then moves up through the Capitulation of Ulm. This takes up the first chapter of the book. Two more chapters are dedicated to the development of the campaign prior to the great battle, including short descriptions of several of the minor actions, and the fall of Vienna. Three chapters cover the battle, and a fourth the Austro-Russian withdrawal from the field. Finally, a chapter follows the aftermath of the battle and the submission of the Holy Roman Emperor to the new Emperor of France.
I've met Mr. Goetz on the internet, and I've been impressed by the depth of his knowledge and his evenhandedness towards the various sides in the early Napoleonic wars, so I was eagerly looking forward to this book. I was not disappointed! It is extensively researched and well written. The descriptions of the various movements and combats are clear, and (while the sources are not as transparently revealed in the text as Muir's recent Salamanca) the author usually shows us why he thinks certain things about the battle, and not others. The maps are a real help (unlike so many books these days!) especially the tactical maps, which are about the best maps I've seen.
Above and beyond all this, the outstanding quality of this book is the author's willingness to see both good and the bad of both sides. He understands the deficiencies of the Allied armies, but doesn't make them out to be cowards or buffoons. Likewise, he sees the excellent qualities of the French army and its leaders, but without idolatry; they make mistakes and have problems too, and Mr. Goetz shows the bad with the good.
The only defect worth mentioning is that the strategic maps are not quite as good as the tactical maps. My goalpost is that all places mentioned in the text will be on the maps, somewhere, and there are a few places not so mentioned; however, they are still well above the average of maps in history books these days.
I was very pleased with this book and I unreservedly recommend it. It's intelligent, well researched, and well written. It's probably one of the two best Napoleonic history books published so far in this decade.
Now, to get Mr. Goetz to write a book just as good on the 1807 Polish campaign!
Yours,
James D. Gray
A great addition to the history of the Napoleonic wars.......2006-12-14
This book is a good overview of the diplomatic and military defeats of the Third Coalition by Napoleon. It outlines the troubles between Austria and Prussia and how the Russians failed to react in time to Napoleons drive. Napoleon's generals were simply able to outperform all of the participants involved. The prose is directed and easy to read. You do not really need any prior knowledge of Napoleon to read this book and for those who are knowledgeable in Napoleon this book may drag on a little at times. Overall though it provides good information and is a worthwhile addition to any Napoleonic library.
COMPLETE AND THOROUGH, BUT DULL.......2006-07-04
As a number of other reviewers have stated, this is a very complete and thorough examination of the Austerlitz campaign and battle, giving more focus to the the Russian Army than some previous studies, but this is definitely warranted. However, my primary complaint is the exceedingly dry and tedious writing style of the author. I will not present myself as an expert on the Napoleonic Wars, but I have read well over 100 books on the subject, and this book is a struggle to complete each page. There is very little sense of the tremendously varied interesting, compelling, and dynamic leaders of this age. These were some real characters, men of flesh and blood, and more than a few wrinkles, but compelling figures then, and now, but one fails to comprehend that in this book. Good history is not a mere recitation of facts; it should make at least some attempt to transport you back in time. I believe this book fails on that level.
Average customer rating:
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Data Acquisition Techniques Using PCs (IDC Technology)
Howard Austerlitz
Manufacturer: Academic Press
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ASIN: 0120683776 |
Book Description
The second edition of this highly successful text focuses on the major changes that have taken place in this field in recent times. Data Acquisition Techniques Using PCs, Second Edition, recognises that data acquisition is the core of most engineering and many life science systems in measurement and instrumentation. It will prove invaluable to scientists, engineers, students and technicians wishing to keep up with the latest technological developments.
* Teaches the reader how to set up a PC-based system that measures, analyzes, and controls experiments and processes through detailed design examples
* Geared for beginning and advanced users, with many tutorials for less experienced readers, and detailed standards references for more experienced readers
* Fully revised new edition discusses latest programming languages and includes a list of over 80 product manufacurers to save valuable time
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Austerlitz
W.G. Sebald
Manufacturer: Penguin Books Ltd
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Binding: Paperback
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The Rings of Saturn
ASIN: 0140297995 |
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The Battle of Austerlitz; Napoleon's Greatest Victory,
Trevor Nevitt Dupuy
Manufacturer: Atheneum
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ASIN: 0027328708 |
Book Description
Napoleon is thirty years old in November 1799, and about to lead France into a new century as First Consul. At Notre Dame in five years, he will be crowned Emperor of France, and Josephine his Empress. In this brilliant combination of history and imagination, Max Gallo takes us from the first day after Napoleons successful coup through to the thrilling height of his empire. From the introduction of the new constitution and Frances fragile peace with its neighbours, to Napoleons determination to bring Britain to its knees, we follow five years of the Little Corporal's life, ending with his victory on the battlefield at Austerlitz.
Customer Reviews:
The man that changed the world.......2002-04-01
It's amazing how this man push the result of the French Revolution and make it a reality, from monarchy to democracy, not only in Europe but around the world.
how i discovered the life of a giant.......2000-04-26
I was really impressed by how a little boy of nine years old, became a big man who changed the history of this world!this book made me thinking of many things,like...me for example.
Book Description
Drawing on his background as an ethnomusicologist as well as years of experience as an accomplished jazz musician, Paul Austerlitz argues that jazz--and the world-view or consciousness that surrounds it--embodies an aesthetic of inclusiveness, reaching out from its African American base to embrace all of humanity. Fans and musicians have made this claim before, but Austerlitz is the first to provide a scholarly basis for it. He examines jazz in relation to race and national identity in the U.S. and then broadens his scope to consider jazz within the African diaspora and in very different transnational scenes, from the Dominican Republic to Finland.
Based on extensive fieldwork, the book explores jazz in an extraordinary range of contexts. One of the central chapters is devoted to the history of the groundbreaking Latin jazz band of Machito and his Afro-Cubans, who were inspired by the dancing of both Harlemites and Jewish mamboniks, while the final chapter includes an extensive interview with the seminal drummer Milford Graves, one of Austerlitz's mentors, who holds that music profoundly influences our biorhythms and indeed shapes our thoughts.
Customer Reviews:
The psychological power of jazz.......2006-03-04
Ethnomusicologist and skilled jazz musician Paul Austerlitz presents Jazz Consciousness: Music, Race, And Humanity is a passionate and persuasive essay postulating the core thesis that jazz and the worldview connected to it embodies an inclusive aspect, reaching beyond its African-American base to connect with all of humanity. Written from a scholarly perspective as well as that of a jazz player and music lover, Jazz Consciousness explores the widespread influence of jazz in music of the United States, The Dominican Republic, and Finland, among other nations as well as the immense contributions of individuals such as Milford Graves and Mario Bauza. An extensively researched and persuasively written accounting of the psychological power of a widely beloved form of music.
The psychological power of jazz.......2006-03-04
Ethnomusicologist and skilled jazz musician Paul Austerlitz presents Jazz Consciousness: Music, Race, And Humanity is a passionate and persuasive essay postulating the core thesis that jazz and the worldview connected to it embodies an inclusive aspect, reaching beyond its African-American base to connect with all of humanity. Written from a scholarly perspective as well as that of a jazz player and music lover, Jazz Consciousness explores the widespread influence of jazz in music of the United States, The Dominican Republic, and Finland, among other nations as well as the immense contributions of individuals such as Milford Graves and Mario Bauza. An extensively researched and persuasively written accounting of the psychological power of a widely beloved form of music.
Books:
- Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology
- No Country for Old Men
- Oh Danny Boy (Molly Murphy Mysteries)
- One Door Away from Heaven
- Pharmacotherapy
- Promise of the Witch-King (Forgotten Realms: The Sellswords, Book 2)
- Protector of the Flight (The Summoning, Book 3) (Luna Books)
- Rain Forests (Magic Tree House Research Guide)
- Rain Storm (John Rain Thrillers)
- Red Mafiya: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America
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