Book Description
"The path the slave took to 'citizenship' is what I want to look at. And I make my analogy through the slave citizen's music -- through the music that is most closely associated with him: blues and a later, but parallel development, jazz... [If] the Negro represents, or is symbolic of, something in and about the nature of American culture, this certainly should be revealed by his characteristic music."
So says Amiri Baraka in the Introduction to Blues People, his classic work on the place of jazz and blues in American social, musical, economic, and cultural history. From the music of African slaves in the United States through the music scene of the 1960's, Baraka traces the influence of what he calls "negro music" on white America -- not only in the context of music and pop culture but also in terms of the values and perspectives passed on through the music. In tracing the music, he brilliantly illuminates the influence of African Americans on American culture and history.
Customer Reviews:
An American Treasure.......2007-06-29
This is one of the most important books on America and American history, culture and citizenship. It would benefit the world if it were incorporated into public education. Someone said that nations are judged by their art and this book examines that subject superlatively. This study of the blues examines the evolving cosmology of the Africans and their journey and creation: the blues, one of the singular most powerful beauties of America. He shows how from the blues came all and embraced all other peoples and cultures. Baraka's ability to live the thoughts of the originators enables us to understand the profoundity of their sorrow and sublimity of their joy.
gone where the Southern cross the yella dog.......2007-02-22
The other day a friend rashly claimed that art and music were equally hard to describe in words. I asked him to tell me about a certain painting of Picasso's. He did, but claimed it wasn't accurate. "OK," I said, "you're right, but now tell me about Mozart's Jupiter Symphony." He opened his mouth, closed it, looked at me, and said, "Yeah, I see what you mean." Writing a book about the blues would be equally hard, it seems to me. So, LeRoi Jones did what he could, back in 1963, to tie the indescribable to the more concrete. He wrote a social history of African-Americans in the USA through the prism of music or---maybe on the principle of red and yellow tile floors (are they red with yellow designs or yellow with red designs ?)---he wrote a book on African-American music through the prism of social history. It is one of the most important books on American music (and American society) that you can find. It has stood the test of time. He begins from the Africans who came to North America as slaves bearing very different cultures, confronted by an absolutely different view of the world emanating from their new masters. Here he tries to show how African music became transformed into African-AMERICAN music and then American. He continues then up through the generations of slavery, to Emancipation, migration to the cities, World War I, the Depression, World War II and the bebop age of the Fifties. The book is pre-Civil Rights movement, pre-Martin Luther King. Jones may have looked down on the NAACP and its allies as "white liberal supported organizations", I'm not sure, but they don't appear. The times are symbolized by the use of "Negro" throughout. I agree, the tome is dated, but don't reject it, don't pooh-pooh the man. This is a very intelligent, very worthwhile book. Anyone, particularly from outside the USA, who wants to know the history of African-American music within its social environment ought still to read BLUES PEOPLE. He writes, "If Negro music can be seen to be the result of certain attitudes, certain specific ways of thinking about the world (and only ultimately about the ways in which music can be made), then the basic hypothesis of this book is understood." [p.153] Jones goes to great lengths to get to the bottom of those attitudes and thoughts.
My main criticism, apart from the fact that history dictates that we must be left a half century behind contemporary realities, is that though Jones obviously knew and loved the blues and jazz and all the various styles ( if not swing), his approach is coldly academic, highly dispassionate. He may criticize people who tried to make money, he may downplay all those who "abandoned" their roots, but my disappointment is that there is nothing of himself in the work barring a few mentions of his family. He does not share his enthusiasm. Music is beauty after all. I am sure he wanted the book to be taken as a serious essay, which it is. But in keeping himself removed from the discussion, being so analytic and professional in the style of the day, he has robbed us "readers of the future" of many insights.
African-American experience in the USA expressed itself most particularly in the blues, only later did that musical mode become part of the general American culture, often watered down, sometimes imitated by those who didn't wish to fit in or who wished to cash in. When conditions have changed, when the black middle class has entered mainstream America, and the urban underclass is wrapped up in hip-hop, gangsta rap culture, which is relentlessly commercialized by the powerful media, talking about the blues may seem a matter for historians or ethnomusicologists. Still, BLUES PEOPLE resonates strongly if we try to understand where we have been. As for where we are going---that old line sums it up---we're goin where the Southern cross the yella dog.
Blues People.......2005-09-22
This is a really interesting look at the evolution of black culture through the lense of music. Some of the author's opinions about later music (50's-60's) may seem out of touch to today's readers, but overall it is well worth reading.
The Best Starting Point.......2005-08-24
I actually purchased the first paperback edition this book a long time ago, and I learned that it had been out of print for quite some time. It was a time when I was a casual listener of blues and jazz, and didn't think about the roots of the music I was listening to. The book was interesting enough, but it didn't have information about more contemporary stuff, as it was printed in 1963.
Recently, I found this book in the upper shelves of my library, having completely forgotten about it in spite of my infatuation with the blues for the better part of the last two decades. It was a most welcome surprise for me, as it contained a compact but comprehensive introduction to the time period from the first Africans came to America to the 1920s when their music was first recorded, and laid the groundwork to how this music evolved in a sociological context. The rural lifestyle, the reflections of the exodus from the south on the music and subsequent refined, urban sound are discussed in this framework.
Although it would not really appeal to the casual reader and listener, "Blues People" is invaluable for the serious blues and jazz fan for setting the music into the general context of social life and external effects that made this music what it is today.
Very honest&breaks all chains.......2003-01-16
this book not only puts the music into perspective but also the struggle that still goes on too this day.very upfront&honest about problems that still linger.it traces the journey&challenges it's reader too better understand the reason for the whys??one of the best Books that I have ever read from start too finish.
Average customer rating:
- Liberal America
- Pure Fury...No Solution
- civil rights
- beautiful
- One of the most affecting plays I've ever read.
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Dutchman and The Slave: Two Plays
LeRoi Jones
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
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ASIN: 0688210848 |
Book Description
Centered squarely on the Negro-white conflict, both Dutchman and The Slave are literally shocking plays--in ideas, in language, in honest anger. They illuminate as with a flash of lightning a deadly serious problem--and they bring an eloquent and exceptionally powerful voice to the American theatre.
Dutchman opened in New York City on March 24, 1964, to perhaps the most excited acclaim ever accorded an off-Broadway production and shortly thereafter received the Village Voice's Obie Award. The Slave, which was produced off-Broadway the following fall, continues to be the subject of heated critical controversy.
Customer Reviews:
Liberal America.......2005-05-08
"Dutchman offers a very realistic study in terms of how "Liberal White American", not racism, is murdering the Black American.
Pure Fury...No Solution.......2004-10-24
This play is written beautifully in a style that resembles some very late American Dadaist poetry. However if you take the play as a whole, this play lacks any didactic purpose. Baraka is hypocritical in that he has become the hate-monger that he despises. Other than wonderful banter and a powerfully angst-ridden diatribe, this play offers nothing but hate and intolerance.
civil rights.......2004-05-07
Wow. I think this play portrays an aspect of the black community that cannot be felt by any other community without some feelings of disingenuity. The rage present in the play is overwhelming. The sense of danger and loss is also present, but more subtly so. This play is also very ambiguous and wanting interpretation. I say "wanting interpretation" because Dutchman seems to call for the reader's own interpretation purposefully... the criticism around it is enough to spark a debate, but still the critical aspects are not overwhelmed by the immediacy of emotion and action.
beautiful.......2000-08-22
A great representation of race relations in america (in the revolutionary '60's as well as representative of today), man's relation to woman, and the irony and tension that is comes package in. For no other reason, the mythology and theological references are delightfully handled. Sadly, this work is one of the most underrated and underread works of the 20th century.
One of the most affecting plays I've ever read........1998-11-03
An excellent play that captivates with a brutal examination of race relations...timeless
Book Description
Stepping effortlessly from myth to cutting-edge science, Mutants gives a brilliant narrative account of our genetic code and the captivating people whose bodies have revealed it—a French convent girl who found herself changing sex at puberty; children who, echoing Homer's Cyclops, are born with a single eye in the middle of their foreheads; a village of long-lived Croatian dwarves; one family, whose bodies were entirely covered with hair, was kept at the Burmese royal court for four generations and gave Darwin one of his keenest insights into heredity. This elegant, humane, and engaging book “captures what we know of the development of what makes us human” (Nature).
Customer Reviews:
Involving and Entertaining.......2007-09-26
I picked up this book after looking through The Mutter Museum: Of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia coffee-table book I received for my birthday. This book looks at human genetic variety through the lens of 'mutants' - people who, in years past, might have been referred to as 'freaks.' The genetic basis of each disorder is laid out. The book teaches much about developmental biology and genetics. In addition, it has many individual life stories as well as bits on history and the history of science.
I picked up this book really intending just to browse through it. I ended up quickly reading the entire book. I am a lover of science books written for the layman, and this is one is very good. It will give you an appreciation for yourself and all those around you.
RU486.......2007-08-02
I am in the process of reading this book, so far I am enjoying it. I am, however considering discontuing reading because of a gross mistake. The author refers to the RU486 as "the morning after pill". This is completely false! RU486 is the so-called abortion pill(s). This is taken AFTER the woman becomes pregnant, generally within the 1st 8 weeks of conception. The morning after pill is a PREVENTATIVE method. If there is an actual pregnancy the morning after pill will DO NOTHING to the pregancy! This book is obviously written by a man who understands the basics of science, but I suppose women's health is excluded from science.
Lively, smart and sympathetic.......2007-04-28
This is an excellent book on the understanding of human genetics, and humanity itself. I've always found biology fascinating, but most books I've stumbled across seem to quickly skim over the subject of abnormalities, as if assuming the reader would be offended or frightened. I think it's natural to be curious about the unusual, and this book does a terrific job of explaining it.
Drawing on history, legend, and modern knowledge, Leroi deals with the process of a human body forming - not just what can go wrong and why, but how these genetic hiccups actually help our understanding of things going right. The writing skips easily between time periods, and for the most part is accessible and not overly technical.
Very squeamish readers might not be keen on some of the photos and illustrations, but they're used tastefully and supplement the text very well. People looking for a "hoo boy, grody freakshow pictures!" book will be let down. However, I was a little disappointed in the relative lack of scientific illustrations to accompany the sections describing the body's construction and growth processes, which would make it a bit clearer for visually-oriented people like me.
Leroi describes his subjects humanely, neither glorifying their abnormalities nor expressing disgust or ridicule at them. In addition, he presents the reality that we are all mutants. Our DNA isn't static or perfect, and that's what makes humanity strange, interesting, and beautiful.
It's fascinating and elegantly written; full of insight, dignity and respect you don't often see in books dealing with subjects like this. I highly recommend it to anyone even vaguely interested in biology or genetics.
Excellent.......2006-09-21
This is no modern day freak show but a very sensitive, respectful and graceful examination of human genetic mutations that our increasing understanding of genes and developmental biology now allows. Development is followed from conception through the growth of limbs, bone, size, genitals, skin etc with examples of the most extreme mutations and their effects.
But it is not only about the extreme mutations. Leroi is also, and perhaps more so, interested in the everyday variation amongst us all and ends with a chapter about human variation and our perceptions of and reactions to 'beauty'.
Human variation and its genetic causes is a subject often difficult to approach because of our history of how we have reacted to difference but this book puts all such worries aside. As Leroi states: 'Injustice can sometimes be the consequence of new knowledge but far more often it slips in through the cracks of our ignorance.'
An excellent book and an excellent example of how our natural curiosity about ourselves and our physical differences can be approached with great dignity and respect.
Graceful exposition of a disturbing topic.......2006-06-30
The human body is a masterpiece of complex interlinked parts, ideally working in harmony. All of us contain slight variations from the norm making each of us a mutant in a technical sense. However, in certain rare human beings the genetic orchestra plays so dissonant a tune that the end product classifies as a "Mutant" in the generally accepted sense of the word.
When the genetic tune goes awry to the extent portrayed by the case studies in the book, dealing with this topic requires of an author a multitude of versatile attributes. He/she needs to paint a verbal picture of the disorder, to put the human under study in historical or geographical context and explain the biological conditions under which the mutation occurred. Leroi rises to the task with grace and authority, making for a fascinating book.
Leroi scouts sources in locales far and wide, effortlessly leaping back and forth across the centuries to find subjects for his exposition. In many cases he supplements his descriptions with illustrations and photographs. His prose is evocative and erudite, circumventing the tedium it could easily segue into, given his academic interest in the subject. However disturbing the topic (and personally I do not delight in the macabre), this is a book well worth reading. I would also recommend this as a great Halloween gift.
Book Description
Emerging from a matrix of Old Left, black nationalist, and bohemian ideologies and institutions, African American artists and intellectuals in the 1960s coalesced to form the Black Arts Movement, the cultural wing of the Black Power Movement. In this comprehensive analysis, James Smethurst examines the formation of the Black Arts Movement and demonstrates how it deeply influenced the production and reception of literature and art in the United States through its negotiations of the ideological climate of the Cold War, decolonization, and the civil rights movement.
Taking a regional approach, Smethurst examines variations in the character of the local expressions of the nascent Black Arts Movement, a movement distinctive in its geographical reach and diversity, while always keeping the frame of the larger movement in view. The Black Arts Movement, he argues, fundamentally changed American attitudes about the relationship between popular culture and "high" art and dramatically transformed the landscape of public funding for the arts.
Book Description
Amiri Baraka - dramatist, poet, essayist, orator, and fiction writer - is one of the preeminent African-American literary figures of our time. The Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader provides the most comprehensive selection of Baraka's work to date, spanning almost 40 years of a brilliant, prolific, and controversial career, in which he has produced more than 12 books of poetry, 26 plays, eight collections of essays and speeches, and two books of fiction. This updated edition contains over 50 pages of previously unpublished work, as well as a chronology and full bibliography.
Customer Reviews:
An Awesome Artist and Philosopher.......2006-11-21
I would not take anyone's word uncritically or unexamined about anything really important. Amiri Baraka is a flawed man. At times he has sounded anti-semitic and other times in his life he has sounded homophobic.
There is plenty in his life to contradict those seemingly mean spirited expressions. However, he was friends to the end with both Allen Ginsberg and James Baldwin among others and had children with Hattie (Cohen?)Jones. And I still don't get the "20 Volume Suicide Note"...musings of somebody not really ready to go quietly into that night?
All that being said, I also find Baraka to be vigorous, rigorous, intellectually and spiritually adventuresome and brave of heart. I have learned MUCH from him. If you don't get it, maybe he isn't talking you or you are not willing to listen...
He has written some beautiful, brilliant poetry that functions through many channels of communication. His essays about African based music are seminal, required, necessary.
Baraka deserves criticism. None of the criticism here so far expresses anything of substance that I can discern.
Personally, I experienced one of my rebirths though the Black Arts Movement. Baraka was one of the leading "midwives". I am VERY thankful for his presence in this crazy, cruel, wonderous world. If you really want to know the truth of what we call "America", the stench and the free-for-all wildflowers, you need to pass by his way.
Reviewing THE BOOK, Not The Controversy Surrounding Its Author.......2006-02-07
As a native of Newark, N.J., I grew up taking Amiri Baraka for granted. It wasn't until I moved to Maryland and finally read this book that I understood who I had met all those times.
This is an EXTRAORDINARY work that details the growth and development of a significant American artist. Its editor takes much care in selecting samples that allow us to see divergent aspects of Baraka.
Especially significant among the many gems within is the text of his eulogy for James Baldwin and his essay on Jesse Jackson. Those works are required reading for those needing to understand the 20th century African-American experience, particularly those who wish to do so as writers.
This book has guided my view of the (African-)American writer's role.
A worthless book.......2003-08-29
I read this book and all I know is that Leroi Jones changed his name to Amiri Baraka.
But all he is... is a frustrated angry man. Full of hate and spite.
not deserving much attention.......2003-08-19
I think this book took me five minutes to read--a lot of talking, no ideas. Original ones, anyway.
An amazing man!.......2003-04-24
Buy this book. It's that simple. This book provides the reader with a developmental history of one of the greatest LIVING revolutionary minds this country has ever produced. He hits you in the heart without bashing you over the head. You may not agree with everything he says, or how he may have lived portions of his life, but you will be affected (in some capacity) by his wit, intelligence and the fierceness of his conventions. A must for anyone who thinks that they are " a radical" or "an activist."
This book is rated UR and may not be suitable for un-realistic audiences.
Book Description
This is the first and most exhaustive book available on the subject of Chop Tops. It contains over 200 pages, with step by step-by-step guidelines on hammering the lid on rods and customs, as well as pickups. This book covers all categories of tops with instructions applicable to customizing cars from the twenties and thirties, all the way up through todays automobiles.
Customer Reviews:
want to chop tops?.......2007-05-23
This book covers chopping tops on A LOT of different vehicles. Pretty well written and lots of photos. You should be able to find something close if you actually want to do this.
If you're going to cut a car get this one.......2007-05-16
This is a very good book on techniques and methods. It covers many cars and trucks from old to new. The text and photos are both informative. You will get great ideas for many many cars and trucks such as grafting tops from one model of vehicle to another. It is very instructive and easy-to-read. I would recommend this highly.
Great DIY Book.......2006-08-15
Packed with information that goes well beyond just chopping top. Lessons in welding, forming metal, how to choose good materials and equipment and more. Easily described as several books in one!
A reasonable guide to chopping tops........2006-06-16
This is an interesting book.It shows a wide variety of vehicles being chopped.Its a good guide on how to perform this body modification.The book also guides you in not going overboard on a top chop.One interesting point I like is it shows you how to put a later 1960's roof onto a 1950's car,and it looks superb.Havent seen that idea before.There's enough information on how to in this book but not a complete step by step guide.
It will help though.Worth considering and good value for the price.
Definitely recommended.......2000-10-07
This book is a great primer for anyone interested in car body modification,and provides a good overview of the techniques used,as well as things to consider,when planning a top chop.It covers a variety of different body types.
Average customer rating:
- Great little graphic novel
- A sexy twist on a classic fairy tale
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Pinocchia
Gibrat , and
Leroi
Manufacturer: Nantier Beall Minoustchine Publishing
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 1561631698 |
Book Description
Poor Gepetto. Alone and horny for a beautiful woman. What if he carved the woman of his dreams into a big puppet? Better than nothing... but then, wait, taking her acts like magic in making her real! Lushly rendered by the Frenchman Gibrat, this sexy spoof of the classic tale has poor innocent Pinocchia taken by many a cynic. And when she lies, guess what becomes bigger...
Customer Reviews:
Great little graphic novel.......2005-04-04
A full-color adult graphic novel.
Like Milo Manara's "Gullivera" (female Gulliver) and Eric Maltaite's "Robinsonia" (female Robinson Crusoe; a rather good book, that I haven't been able to acquire yet), Pinocchia is an erotic tale based on an earlier story (Pinocchio, the wooden boy).
Galipettois an old man living alone in the deep woods when he is inspired to make a wooden female. Luckily for him, Galipettois a first-class carpenter that makes his living carving toys. Using a tree that collapsed into his shack, Galipetto creates a wooden woman. After he is finished, he takes the little wooden woman for a test drive, and unknown to him, this causes the woman to come alive. Galipetto learns about this amazing transformation when Pinocchia, nude but for shoes and an apron, brings Galipetto breakfast and asks if he is her papa.
Some local police stop by and ask if anything is damaged after the storm, to find a nearly nude woman rushing from the back room, and hugging her "papa." The police take them to jail.
While in jail, Pinocchia, nude but for a mutating coat (one minute a green coat, the next a green dress), ends up going down on one of the men there in jail. As the police do not have anything on Pinocchia, they release her, but keep Galipetto in jail. So, the barely clothed woman wanders down the street and is picked up by a man in a car.
The man takes her to a party, where a woman helps Pinocchia change clothes (and who ends up fondling Pinocchia). While the women are otherwise occupied, two men peer into the room, and eventually lead Pinocchia away from the party and, at the first opportunity, prostitute her. The rascals run off with Pinocchia's pay, and without leaving her any money to pay the hotel bill. While Pinocchia begins to "pay" for the room with her mouth, the hotel owner's wife runs in and spanks Pinocchia with a wooden object. Pinocchia flees the hotel.
In the meantime, Galipetto is released and he wanders along in his night clothes, attempting to return home. Along the way he ends up at the same house Pinocchia wandered up to and entered after she fled the angry wife. While his creation is screwing around with a man up on the second floor, Galipetto is offered the position of gardener. The gardener was just fired and thrown off the premises for sleeping with the maid.
Running away from an attempted forced and unwanted bath, Galipetto runs across his Pinocchia, who has reverted to wooden status. Galipetto "revives" her, is caught . . . and the tail continues its twists and turns for another 25 pages (and in those 25 pages? visit to a circus, underwater brothel on a submarine . . .).
In the Pinocchio story, there was a certain punishment rendered upon him when he lied (his nose grew). Well, in this case, when Pinocchia lies, her breasts grow (and she doesn't lie, apparently, until after page 35; though, at one point she purposely lies to save herself in the water, and ends up with massive breasts).
Overall, a very good little graphic novel, with great artwork and a good pace. The book includes a small amount of bondage, a small amount of whipping, and a certain amount of public nudity . . .The kind of book that leads one to want to read more by these authors, but unfortunately, I haven't found anything else by them.
A sexy twist on a classic fairy tale.......2000-11-07
Pinocchia is a charming adult graphic-novel which puts a spin on the traditional Pinocchio fairy-tale.
First of all, to describe this Pinocchia one must first compare it to another artist with a similar style: Manara. Gibrat & Leroi weave a fine book with sexy art, enjoyable story, and a lovely fairy-tale heroine all rolled up in one package. The art is quite nice, and although the book is not fully explicit (like a Manara)the scenes are well executed (albeit brief). There is also a great deal of humor which is properly pulled off and won't leave the reader hanging (unlike Manara, on occasions). Another pleasant touch is that this story is (at times) read with a narrarator perspective, adding to the fairy-tale illusion.
Overall, it's a worthy addition to the graphic novel section.
Average customer rating:
- My God, pick up this book now!
- This book has it all.
- I love Hettie!
- couldn't put it down
- Poignant, but ultimately mundane
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How I Became Hettie Jones
Hettie Jones
Manufacturer: Grove Press
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Women of the Beat Generation: The Writers, Artists and Muses at the Heart of a Revolution
ASIN: 0802134963 |
Amazon.com
Jones' atmospheric prose brings the Beat era to life with more gusto than any previous memoir, thanks to homely details like eating potato pancakes at the Second Avenue Deli and wearing Ukrainian scarves and black tights. She looks back on her marriage to LeRoi Jones with tenderness, even as she delineates the cultural forces that eventually ripped them apart. Famous friends like Allen Ginsberg make appearances, but Jones' focus is on family (her two daughters are lovingly described) and individual growth. Evocative and touching.
Book Description
Greenwich Village in the 1950s was a haven to which young poets, painters, and jazz musicians flocked. Among them was Hettie Cohen, who'd been born into a middle-class Jewish family in Queens and who'd chosen to cross racial barriers to marry the controversial black poet LeRoi Jones. Theirs was a bohemian life in the awakening East Village of underground publishing and jazz lofts, through which drifted such icons of the generation as Allen Ginsberg, Thelonious Monk, Jack Kerouac, Frank O'Hara, Billie Holiday, James Baldwin, and Franz Kline.
Customer Reviews:
My God, pick up this book now!.......2006-09-17
I am an avid reader, and I read an assortment of books, but I have never come across a book like this! Miraculously, I picked it up at a used bookshop and bought it after quickly scanning the description on the back flap. It seemed interesting, but was thrown in a corner with a bunch of other books that I promised myself I would read when I caught up on mounds of other books which seemed more important. Fast forward a few years and imagine someone literally nose in book, reading while walking, not able to put it down! This is a woman's fascinating account of life in the '50s and '60s, but that's not all. Hettie's writing style is so unique, beautiful and inspired it's a shame she hasn't written a dozen books with the same freeflowing gorgeous poetry of this one. This book actually made me laugh out loud, sob, smile, feel anger, and shame. It also made me frustrated by the injustices of the world. How can one attend school everyday from the age of five and not learn a tenth of what is taught in this slim book? Buy this for your sons and daughters, your parents, friends, teachers. It's true that this should be required reading. I would love to have a conversation with this wise woman, but in the meantime, this book is as close to that as one can hope for.
This book has it all........2004-08-25
This book has it all. It's half novel, half history lesson, half
feminist screed, and half bittersweet love story. And somehow it all
works.
In my first novel I wrote, "Behind every great man is a good woman he
steals all of his ideas from". But in this case the man had his own
great ideas, and the woman proved later with this book that she is the
equal to the great man.
love, Michael W. Dean
I love Hettie!.......2004-02-29
I had the honor of taking both a poetry and personal essay class taught by Hettie Jones, and all I have to say, is she is just about the coolest lady I know, and since I met her before reading this memoir, it was absolutely amazing to think of all she has been through, she is wonderful and this book reflects just that.
couldn't put it down.......2003-04-10
Great books - stayed up until 3 am to finish. paid the price this morning but it was worth it.
Poignant, but ultimately mundane.......2002-10-17
Hettie Jones' work is an important contribution to the Beat era. The Beats were avant-garde in many ways, but they remained entrenched in sexism. Sexual liberation is here frought with masculine privilege, as is drug-taking and the creation of art--men get to create, while the mothers cook, clean, and change diapers.
However, I found the book a bit dull and unreflective. Jones seems not to have been very excited by the Beat scene or the people whom she knew. Nor does she emote a real feminist consciousness. Instead, she seems to sense that something was wrong, and hope that things will change.
Book Description
This book covers the technology of fiberglass automobile bodies. Everything about hot rod and custom car building is covered in this book, from making molds to laying up fiberglass to working with aftermarket Glass bodies. This manual is a must for any rodder who is thinking of building his own design, or modifying something that already exists.
Customer Reviews:
A Completely dissapointing and amateur book..sent back!.......1999-08-15
This book is was very dissapointing in multiple aspects...it begins with "this is not an engineering treatise" perhaps that should have been in the title; a paltry 200pages and in size16 font this book deals with the fiberglass industry and its construction in vague generalities without any regard to detail. The entire section entitled "the tools to use" says:"finishing tools are mostly sanders and polishers that are common to a car enthusiast anyway"...so "Tex" makes no suggestions about what would be good to use for fiberglass applications. There are no descriptions orinstructions,...truly the back of a Bisquick box has more in the way of chronologic instructions than is available in the book and because of this there are no pictures that relate to the subject matter on the page; the pictures themselves look as is they are snapshots taken in 1963 of "Tex"'s friends... The anecdotal approach to describing the process of fiberglass fabrication lends itself to major holes...one constantly asks themselves how to competele a concept or project that he introduces...but to no avail.. The book contains a huge number of advertisements that are wedged throughout the book, the entire second half of the book (from page 96 onward) is devoted to "mail-order bodies & parts" and "Ready-Made fiberglass composites".. for a how-to book I felt totally ripped off, I did not want to buy a catalouge of ready-made parts! This book that "Tex" made was a poor excuse for a manuscript and would certainly earn an "F" in school, it was embaressingly amateur in its presentation and I felt awkward carrying the book around... I hope that if anyone needs a book on how to truly build using reinforced plastics and/or composites I reccomend another book by Forbes Aird "Fiberglass & Composite Materials" I was floored by the difference...I can actually build something real with the guides in that book...
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