Blueprint Small: Creative Ways to Live with Less

Book Description

When it comes to deciding on the size of a home or living space, one question must be asked: How much space is enough? Americans often relate "enough" space to dimensions, rather than to how a space will really be enjoyed. In Blueprint Small, Michelle Kodis examines small spaces (each 1500 square feet or less) from a wide spectrum of locations, budgets, and individual styles-each chosen because they illustrate that scaling back in size doesn't have to mean scaling back in comfort, spaciousness, or beauty. From a sleek urban apartment to a funky mountain home to a renovated beach house, Blueprint Small reveals how smaller homes invite rather than overwhelm, comfort rather than alienate. The projects offered here represent a variety of functions, locations and environments, combining the technical aspects of building and using small spaces with the stories of the people who live in them. Blueprint Small invites you to explore inspiring and imaginative ways to inhabit smaller spaces, and still live large. Michelle Kodis is a freelance writer and editor based in Telluride, Colorado. She is the author of Love Scents and The Telluride Cookbook; she has also written for The San Francisco Examiner, The Oregonian, and Backpacker magazine.

Customer Reviews:

Beautiful Ideas for Smaller Homes.......2005-02-08

The small spaces in this book represent a spectrum of locations, budgets and individual style and taste, but all were chosen because they prove that scaling back doesn't have to become a sacrifice in comfort, spaciousness, or beauty." ~Michelle Kodis

Blueprint Small gives ideas for anyone interested in building or renovating a small home, office, or retreat space. It could be 240 or 2,400 square feet. I am almost jealous as I view page 14. How I wish for a private little space outside to escape for dinner or to sit in the sun. This is what I miss after selling our home. I need to find a new place with a private deck where my outdoor furniture can live happily. I love how the doors in this book open up to lovely patios and decks and how sunlight is streaming into the rooms making each house look so cozy and inviting.

Contents:

The Joys of California Living
A Cost-Efficient Caretaker Apartment
An Elegant Suburban Retreat
Tranquility Above the Crowds
Something Old, Something New
A Fresh Angle
Trailer Park Living with a Twist
A Neighborly Development
A Small Addition Makes a Big Difference
A Contemporary Slant on a Traditional House

One of the best ideas in this book is a room that functions as a bedroom and an office. Hey, that is my current situation. The designers put the bookshelves between the desk and the bed. That sounds like a great solution and the shelves were high enough that they actually look like a room divider.

As you are in bed, you can see items on the shelves (in cute boxes) on the back side of the bookshelves and on the office side it is filled with books. So this book gave me some design ideas for my current situation.

There are some basic blueprint designs and lots of fun full-color pictures showing what can be done with small spaces. The retreat idea with a swimming pool looks like a great writing location for a writer or could work as a studio for an artist. You would never know the trailer park home is a trailer. That is probably the most interesting house to study. If you have an interest in community gardens, there is section with a number of cottages all placed around a gardening area. The shelving in these cottages helped to save space and made the rooms look so cozy.

While this is not a detailed guide for building your own home, it will give you lots of ideas and some pictures to show an architect.

OK, I have to go reorganize my bedroom/office. This book gave me some great ideas.

~TheRebeccaReview.com

VERY INSPIRATIONAL!.......2003-09-24

This is a "must have" book for anyone who needs some inspiration and incentive for turning small spaces into fantastic living areas! Wow! Kodis's book offers a thorough look at creative and aesthetic solutions for all lifestyles. Complete with architectural renderings, floor plans, photographs, and excellent descriptions; the book appeals to a wide variety of tastes.
Although Blueprint Small is an effective tool for getting started on projects, it's also darn good coffee table reading! I've given it to several friends as a gift, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. It's a wonderful combination of entertainment and utility.
Kodis has a very clear and charming writing style that takes you eagerly from one chapter to the next . . . and has you wishing for more! She is professional and knowledgeable, but you don't have to be an architect to understand the book's content. It is truly a pleasure to read.
I highly, HIGHLY recommend it!

Excellent Designs, Wonderful Presentation.......2003-08-29

I'd be lying if I said that most of the designs in "Blueprint Small" are my cup of tea (with the notable exception being the apartment in the Chicago highrise -- amazing!)... I'm more of a "white walls and clean, modern design" sort of person. However, this book does a very good job of showing a variety of innovative and imaginative designs, in a format that shows them from all sorts of angles. It also explains the reasons for decisions made by the architects and homeowners, which is something you don't often hear. Complaints that most people can't afford to do the things shown in this book are somewhat beside the point; if that were the case, "Architectural Digest" magazine wouldn't be as well known as it is. "Blueprint Small" exists in that same realm, where good design is appreciated for what it is. This book is a very good source for ideas for improving your own space; you don't have to hire an architect or an interior designer to appreciate what it has to offer.

"Small Additions" would be a better title.......2003-07-15

Very few of the spaces shown incorporate the entire area the owners live in. Instead, some of these "small" spaces are 500-square-foot additions to much larger homes. It's not much of a challenge to make that work!

This is a hodge-podge of designs with little theme, and Kodis' writing is some of the clunkiest in the home design field. Try any Taunton book, instead, such as one of the books in Sarah Susanka's excellent Not-So-Big House series.

Unrealistic.......2003-05-24

The review for the book gave me the impression that it would deal with the experiences of people who live in small spaces, and give ideas of how to deal realistically with a small space. The book does not seem to deal with the reality that the vast majority of people who live in small homes are on a more conservative budget, and can not afford to do most of the decorating that is done in this book. I will agree that most of the spaces shown were small, but most of the decorations, and the remodelling that have been done, are not within the reach of most people who own small homes. In my opinion, this book is written for people who can afford a very large home, but choose, for whatever reasons, to live in a smaller home. I live very comfortably and have been able to restore my home in stages, but the things that are shown in this book are things that I could only do if I had large amounts of money to spend, or if I worked as a carpenter(and had large amounts of money to spend).

The book is well written, and the pictures are presented in an appealing way, but I would only recommend this book for a someone who has the means to live in a larger house but chooses to renovate a smaller one.

Book Description

A complete drawing kit for beginners.

Learning the captivating art of pencil drawing has never been easier! In this comprehensive introductory kit, acclaimed artist Gene Franks walks you through all the essentials, covering basic techniques as well as more complex concepts such as perspective and value. Pencil Drawing includes nine complete step-by-step drawing lessons to follow and learn. Each project in the book contains clear instructions, helpful tips, and easy-to-follow illustrations. And in addition to the project book, the kit also includes all the art tools and materials you will need to get started creating impressive works of art right away. Beginners are practically guaranteed successful results!

Hardcover 6.875" x 10.25" case includes a 32-page paperback book, 6 different pencils, sharpener, pencil extender, artist's triangle, sandpaper pad, blending stump, kneaded eraser, and pad of drawing paper.

Customer Reviews:

A Complete Drawing Kit for Beginners.......2005-09-04

This Drawing Kit is a very good starting point for a beginner. In one package you have a good set of lessons, a coordinated set of tools and instructions that are very clear. The drawing results you achieve in each lesson are directly related to your effort put into each lesson.
Gene Franks is an excellent instructor. Try it, you will like this book.

You Can Do Better.......2004-04-13

The very short book has a few nice drawings of varied subjects, broken down into a few stages each. There's little in the way of real instruction, though--certainly little that a true newbie would find of use.

The art materials include a very small sketch pad (just 9.5 x 6.5 inches) and a passable beginner's assortment of pencils and so forth, as described by Amazon. There's one huge problem with the pencils, though: the darkest is a 2B. For many pencil artists, that's the _lightest_ thing they'll often work with. If you want to achieve truly dark areas in a drawing for realistic contrast and shading, you need something more like 6 or 7B and darker (or charcoal pencils or sticks).

You'd be better off buying basic materials at an art supply store and checking out beginner tutorials online, more detailed instructional books, and/or taking a class at your local art center, school, etc. For a newbie, I'd recommend getting a full set of quality art pencils (like 8B-2H hardness) in a case, a kneaded eraser (vital!), vinyl eraser, a couple stumps/tortillons, a small sanding block (or just use a piece of fine-grit sandpaper for carpentry, etc.), a sharpener (any standard one will do), a ruler, a circle template, and a _big_ sketch pad.

Brought out the artist in me.......2002-07-22

Before I got this kit, I never really thought I was that good at art. Once I got it out, I couldn't stop drawing the beautiful pictures he teaches. When I brought my drawings to church, everyone was amazed at how good at art I was. Everyone I showed my pictures to thought they were beautiful. I would highly recommend this book. The instructions are easy to do and understand.

Excellent kit for any drawing enthusiast........2000-11-22

With the basic materials in your hand and an insipiration in your head you are all set to begin Pencil Drawing as a career or as a hobby. The instruction book begins with some small objects and extends upto quite complex drawings. It explains all the drawings step by step.

I would like to suggest one thing. The author here is an expert and the drawings that he has mentioned in the instruction book are quite "life like" and exceptional. DO NOT TRY TO ACHIEVE SAME QUALITY THE FIRST TIME. Though it looks so simple from the steps that author mentions, you might end up with some frustration. INSTEAD TRY TO DRAW THEM TO THE BEST OF YOUR CALIBER or maybe leave them half done. TRY TO GET THE IDEAS BEHIND DRAWING AND SKETCHING and I am sure the whole kit is PRACTICALLY meant for that.........TO GET YOU STARTED!

This kit is also a great gift idea to someone who is interested in drawing and sketching. I bought it two years ago for myself and am buying it again as a gift for someone special in India.

Excellent kit for any drawing enthusiast........2000-11-22

Product Description

This is the perfect introductory kit for anyone who wants to learn the fascinating art of drawing in colored pencil. Inside is everything needed to get started, including a 32-page, full-color project book filled with inspiration and ideas.

Kit includes: project book, 8 drawing pencils, white drawing paper, colored drawing paper, kneaded eraser, pencil extender, sandpaper block, sharpener, triangle, and blending stump.

Walter Foster K03.

Customer Reviews:

poor quality pencils-decent instruction.......2007-06-02

The hard "dry" pencils provided with this book are enough to discourage the person new to color pencil from ever getting started. But I am accustomed to using Prismacolor and Koh-i-noor pencils...both are very richly pigmented.
I like the instruction in that it shows how to create a full color painting using a very limited palette.
Sadly they took the gimmick approach...if they had maybe fattened up the actual learning content and forgot about providing "all you need" it would have been a better product.

Book Description

Adobe Premiere 6.5 Classroom in a Book uses the popular project-based lessons for which this series is known to cover basic editing principles, working with subclips and virtual clips, creating transitions, working with audio, and titling. The CD-ROM contains all of the files you need to get started right away, and the Adobe brand ensures unparalleled course quality. After all, who better to teach Premiere than the folks who created it?

Book Description

What goes on in a dog's head? How do they see the world? What are the priorities, dreams, and desires of the average mutt? From the joys of digging and fetching to the horrors of bath time, James Croft has pictured it all with colorful charm. This indispensable book shows you all you ever needed-or wanted-to know about what really goes on in a dog's life!

Customer Reviews:

The Best of the Best.......2004-05-29

I have read many biographies of Dorothea Dix, and this one is the best of the best! She was a fascinating woman of her age. Devotedly religious, she found a life similiar in many respects to Mother Teresa of our age - although Miss Dix was much more effective using legislation as a tool in her relief work. Her work with the mentally ill has been studied by many professionals in the field. David Gollaher brings all the available historical documents together in an easy-to-read format for the general public. I hope this book will be rereleased for a new generation of students, social workers, nurses and doctors. Highly recommended for any public or private library.

Too cerebral and passionless..........2003-01-15

Gollaher paints a very dull picture of Dorothea Dix. There is not one colorful insight into this fascinating, world-changing woman. If there was even a hint of love or respect, or even curiosity about his subject, the author never reaveals it. There is an inexcusable failure on the author's part to make this famous lady 'touchable'. He discredits her faith with one stroke of his pen and rambles about the more cerebral parts of her life and work. Yes, she was interested in other things besides helping people but I don't care to know about how many bugs she collected and how many famous persons she socialized with. I want to know about Dorothea Dix! This was one of the most discursive, spiritless biographies I have read in many years. Read another biographer's account of this amazing woman, perhaps one that is written by a woman.

A Gem of a Biography.......2001-07-26

I bought this book after reading the following award citation it received from the Organization of American Historians: "VOICE FOR THE MAD provides more than a fine analysis of how and why a key northern antebellum reformer came to her reform, more than a well-written, sophisticated account of how a well-traveled reformer sought progress in Europe and the Americas, more than an illuminating account of how and why Americans created asylums for the insane. Gollaher's study also throws important light on how a woman outside the home could be an important lobbyist inside antebellum male legislatures; on how and why antebellum religion generated a white-hot reformist passion; on how and why reformist passion often stopped short, as in Dix's case, of anti-slavery; and perhaps most astonishingly, on how and why the Yankee woman as a reforming fanatic could succeed in Southern legislatures...[A] gem of a biography." Amazingly, the book is even better than this, because it reveals how a person was able to use her own demons -- her anger, her feelings of abandonment, her incredible nervous energy -- as sources of strength in the public arena of politics.

Extremely subtle, nuanced portrait of a woman on the edge.......1999-11-17

This is a great biography, if somewhat exhastive in its detailing of Dorothea Dix's incredibly energetic and productive life. What captivated me was Gollaher's ability to evoke Dix's essential sadness, something that went back to her early childhood and that made her self-aware yet remote from other people. Ironically it was her self-possession, her sense of being different from everyone else, that enabled her to related to the mentally ill and create a unique career.

Remarkable insight into the problems of women in politics.......1998-04-14

I casually picked up this book, read the introduction, and was hooked. The idea that Dorothea Dix could fashion a political career -- sitting with legislators to draft laws, guiding bills through the House and Senate with personal patronage -- generations before women could vote, well, this amazed me. But more amazing is the whole first section of the book, in which Gollaher details Dix's terrible and depressing early life in New England. The strength in this book is how he connects the dots of her painful early life with her painfully successful career in Washington and dozens of state capitals around the country. I can't think of anyone who paid a greater psychic price for success. Her story is largely a tragedy, exquisitely told here.

Average customer rating:

Forces some soul-searching, not perfect for everyone

A Must-Read for all parents of children of all ages!!

Mom, I hate you

Mom, I Hate You! Children's Provocative Communication: What It Means and What to Do About It
Don Fleming , and Mark Ritts
Manufacturer: Three Rivers Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Marriage & Family | Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Discipline | Parenting | Parenting & Families | Subjects | Books
General | Parenting | Parenting & Families | Subjects | Books
General | Parenting & Families | Subjects | Books
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How To Stop Battling With Your Teenager

How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk

Accessories:

Health o Meter HDC100-01 "Grow with Me" Teddy Bear Scale for Babies and Toddlers

Braun IRT 4020 ThermoScan Ear Thermometer

ASIN: 0609808567
Release Date: 2003-04-22

Book Description

“You Can’t Make Me!” “You’re Stupid!” “I Wish You Were Dead.”

From embarrassing public displays of defiance and snide remarks at the dinner table to shocking outbursts of hate and anger, children often communicate in ways that push the notion of freedom of expression way beyond acceptable boundaries. In Mom, I Hate You!, respected psychotherapist Don Fleming demonstrates that such behavior is a natural, necessary part of growing up and offers parents effective strategies for responding to provocative statements and establishing meaningful, mutually satisfying parent-child communications.
Dr. Fleming takes parents through these tactics step by step, including:

• Decoding the meaning behind children’s words
• Responding to the meaning, not the words
• Strategies for change—incentives and consequences
• Provocative communication and sibling rivalry
• Line-by-line examples

Dr. Fleming explains how to decode the emotional message behind a child’s seemingly rude, mean-spirited, or disrespectful words and helps parents evaluate their own habitual, often counterproductive reactions to specific situations and behavior patterns. Using realistic examples, he shows that parents can reduce antagonizing and aggressive confrontations while teaching their kids to express their emotions freely and honestly.

Customer Reviews:

Forces some soul-searching, not perfect for everyone.......2005-07-25

Please don't let my title distract you, this is an incredibly informative and helpful book, but I would like to address two issues I have personally with it.
First, I don't buy that all the evil things children sometimes say are innocuous. Yes, telling g-ma she smells is innocent enough, but my experience is that when my daughter told me she hated me, at least partly, she meant it. To just shrug the comments off and to get at the "root causes" as the author suggests would be highly myopic. Again, for many the comments may not be as mean-spirited as I thought they were.
My second minor quibble with this great book would be that the suggestions he provides are really best for married (or divorced and civil to each other) parents. Oh sure, he instructs the separated parents to "get on the same page", but that is not always possible, so for divorced people there may be better tomes.
One more point prior to the actual review, I greatly admire that the author takes on his critics directly and forcefully. More on the critics later...
Initially when my daughter started saying things entirely inappropriate or mean, I assumed she learned them from an aspiring gangsta (loves thugs 50 cent, Eminem, etc. and yes they are talented) friend who is slightly older. My imploring her that talking like that was wrong and that she would be grounded was not working. Finally, when not getting her way one day, she said, "I hate you."
I completely lost it. I didn't get incredibly angry, rather, I became quite despondent. I told my ex about it and suggested her comments about me were contributing to the problem. She disagreed, and said basically that it was my fault/problem. Like any parent would I'm sure, I was very upset about the drastic decline in our relationship. Amazingly, despite sharing my situation with friends and family, no one offered suggestions or support. Partly, I'm sure, that is because I did not properly "nip it (her behavior) in the bud" in their opinion because I don't believe in spanking. Hence, it was my fault.

Dr. Fleming forces each and every parent to look in the mirror and think about how their behavior may be compounding the problems you are experiencing with your children. People that are screaming constantly can't expect children to not model that behavior. He focuses on several other parental patterns and their long-term deleterious effects. This can be very helpful in analyzing your situation. Personally, I didn't yell much at , but I did learn a lot about how to handle situations.
Dr. Fleming thoroughly discusses specific scenarios and how to handle them both immediately and long term through consequences for the child's actions.
This may be where Dr. Fleming's critics take aim. He does not advocate spanking. I personally completely agree, but I do know others that feel that the end of spanking is the downfall of civilization. Somehow, this has become a liberal/conservative issue. Frankly, I don't get it, but when I told the same people the suggestions in the book, they said invariably that it was coming from a West Coast/liberal/leftist. Whatever!

This book hopefully will help my relationship with my daughter; hopefully it will help you, too.

Thank you Amazon.com and we are STILL waiting for blogging abilities.

A Must-Read for all parents of children of all ages!!.......2003-12-12

My copy of "Mom, I hate You!" is dog-eared and underlined, the cover limp from being shoved into my purse on the way to My Gym and carpool. Even if your child does not communicate in a provocative way, I guarantee you there will be much to glean from this insightful, intelligent, highly readable book. Dr. Fleming is brilliant, and in an immensely enjoyable and helpful manner, he lays out a simple guide to enhance communcation between parents and children. I have read many books on child-rearing, but this book is the best. It's fun and fast to read, and the suggestions are laid out in a simple, easy to comprehend (and, most importantly, easy to remember fashion.) Best of all, at the end of each chapter, Dr. Fleming provides a summary to remind you of the main steps you need to take to increase effective communication. This guide alone is worth the price of the book because if you're an impossibly busy parent who falls into bed at night as I do you just don't have TIME to read all the helpful parenting books out there(wonderful as many of them may be). I have learned so much from this book but what has helped me the most is the chapter on your child's style and temperament. Dr. Fleming outlines several basic styles and you will be amazed to find how accurately your child will fit into one (or a few) of them. In one day, I found myself responding to each of my children with far more empathy and found our conflicts reduced by a huge percent! Equally important, Dr. Fleming outlines parents' basic styles and temperaments and suggests that we as parents examine our own
personalities to better understand how we interact--in positive and negative ways--with our children. He does all this simply, though, and manages also to assuage your guilt as a parent for the times you do and say things wrong (as we all do), the times you make mistakes and fly off the handle, etc. This book truly is a gem! Read it, and you will feel empowered about how you interact with your children each and every day.

Mom, I hate you.......2003-08-15

Dr. Fleming's book, "Mom,I Hate You" is a practical, easily understandable guide to dealing with your child's words and behaviors. I would highly recommend this book to my clients and friends.

Book Description

The recent dedication of the World War II memorial and the sixtieth-anniversary commemoration of D-Day remind us of the hold that World War II still has over America's sense of itself. But the selective process of memory has radically shaped our picture of the conflict. Why else, for instance, was a 1995 Smithsonian exhibition on Hiroshima that was to include photographs of the first atomic bomb victims, along with their testimonials, considered so controversial? And why do we so readily remember the civilian bombings of Britain but not those of Dresden, Hamburg, and Tokyo?

Marianna Torgovnick argues that we have lived, since the end of World War II, under the power of a war complex—a set of repressed ideas and impulses that stems from our unresolved attitudes toward the technological acceleration of mass death. This complex has led to gaps and hesitations in public discourse about atrocities committed during the war itself. And it remains an enduring wartime consciousness, one most recently animated on September 11.

Showing how different events from World War II became prominent in American cultural memory while others went forgotten or remain hidden in plain sight, The War Complex moves deftly from war films and historical works to television specials and popular magazines to define the image and influence of World War II in our time. Torgovnick also explores the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, the emotional legacy of the Holocaust, and the treatment of World War II's missing history by writers such as W. G. Sebald to reveal the unease we feel at our dependence on those who hold the power of total war. Thinking anew, then, about how we account for war to each other and ourselves, Torgovnick ultimately, and movingly, shows how these anxieties and fears have prepared us to think about September 11 and our current war in Iraq.

Customer Reviews:

elegant and original.......2005-10-05

THE WAR COMPLEX is a wonderful book--disturbing and illuminating, historicallly rich and politically timely. It begins with a startling and sweeping observation: the history of the twentieth century is a history of almost continuous war; "modernity" is virtually always "wartime"; and the accelerated violence of World War II, directed against military and civilian populations alike, is the centerpiece of our shared past. To understand the modern mind, then, we have to understand how it has been transformed by exposure to mass killing. We have to remember not only the storming of beaches and the liberation of capitals, but also the concentration camps, the firebombing of homes, the eradication of whole cities by atomic bombs.

One problem, of course, is that we remember World War II too much. It is invoked, for instance, as a justification for more war, as when politicians and media depicted 9/11 as a repetition of Pearl Harbor--at attack on America that demanded an old-fashioned, full-scale military response. Violence, experienced and remembered, begets violence. This is a symptom of what Torgovnick cals "wartime consciousness": overexposed to mass death, we organize the world according to antagonisms. It's always "us against them."

Torgovnick's daring and imaginative undertaking, in THE WAR COMPLEX, is to try to think her way through and out of "wartime consciousness." Some hawks and dullards will complain that the book is too personal, too meditative, that it turns to the imagination and the study of art when war is a matter of politics, when mass death is a matter of statistics. They will miss the point. When wartime is all the time, when our societies and our minds are built to be combat-ready, moving beyond these dominant patterns requires some unorthodox thinking. Therefore THE WAR COMPLEX considers, for example, "the kind of imaginative projections that novels can provide, their opening up of a space based on social realities, but not determined by them." And therefore, in her unconventional book--moving elegantly among the spheres of history and psychology, politics and the arts--Torgovnick adopts a personal, sometimes even confessional mode of writing. It's the opposite of self-indulgence. It's an effort to discover some grounds of "identification," some pattern of human connection beyond wartime.

Shameful.......2005-08-18

Unfortunately, this "book" is not a very enlightening read !!. Fortunately, I didn't buy the book, it was checked out of our university library. I found it difficult finishing this drivel. On too many occasions Torgovnick states her unsound opinion as absolute fact. She proceeds to mistakenly develop her point of view on the basis of that egregious erroneous opinion . (Big error there!!) Her conclusions usually are drawn on nefarious and/or abnormal rational that border on the absurd. Very close to being out of touch with reality!! All in all, it appears the dictum "publish or parish" got the upper hand for this professor

The Holocaust of War Complex?.......2005-08-02

The book was interesting as a study in writing style. The title of the book does not cover the military industrial establishment or tease out how real WWII combat vets feel about our current politico-military juggernaut. While reading I couldn't help but think this is an English Prof showing me how conscious she is of her own consciousness. Unfortunately the book is a big digresson about the holocaust and Adolf Eichman's role as person who was a functionary and organized the logistics of killing millions Jews. R.J. Lifton has already clearly described bureaucratic distancing from killing in modern techno-war. So what's new? The book does not contain any information about the current military industrial establishment and its influence on U.S, politics and the relationship to the war in Iraq if there is one. Go to a book store and read the brief conclusion.

Relevant book for our times.......2005-06-04

World War II holds a unique place of privilege in the American, and Allied, historical imagination. It was the war of the greatest generation; the uncontroversial war, the just war; the last war when good and evil were clearly delineated in the minds of Americans. World War II is the shorthand reference used to evoke moral high ground and uncomplicated patriotism.
History is written by the victors, as the adage goes, with all that implies of selectivity of memory. Which history, and which war, one chooses to invoke, is a matter of politics. For instance, before the American invasion of Iraq in 2002, both opponents and proponents resorted to analogies to earlier conflicts to serve their argument. For opponents, the specter of the quagmire of Vietnam was raised, with its searing images of civilian suffering. For proponents, WWII was relentlessly presented as the glorious model, with Pearl Harbor and Munich the ready references.
But the legacy of World War II may not be as uncomplicated or as controversial as we choose to remember it in America and much of Western Europe. In "The War Complex", Duke professor Marianna Torgovnick explores the images of D-Day, the media spectacle of the Eichmann trial, the emotional legacy of the Holocaust, Hiroshima and the A-bomb, to discover how the selective process of memory still shapes our picture of the conflict and of subsequent conflicts, including the response to September 11th.
Torgovnik examines the narratives of D-Day, and how they played into the image that Americans want to see of themselves: "good versus evil, American multiculturalism (within limits, since racial segregation was still in place) versus the homogenous racial Ûbermensch or `Jap,' citizen soldiers fighting a necessary war against the forces of totalitarianism, us versus them." She argues that our carefully constructed cultural memory of war, and the cumulative state of mind called wartime consciousness, persisted well beyond the end of hostilities right through the Cold War and remained ready to be reanimated after September 11.
"The war on terrorism...promises an indefinite prolongation of wartime states of mind. That prolongation suggests one strong reason why you should read this book. `The War Complex' probes the cost of sustained wartime consciousness on a society and a culture, which are more than military." That is only one argument for the relevance and timeliness of this insightful, wide-ranging study that balances solid scholarship with lively, accessible writing. Torgovnik brilliantly combines history, psychology of war, memoir, and imaginative literature, to expose the construction of the war complex and to imagine a way out based on an ethics of identification

The War Complex: World War II in Our Time.(Book review): An article from: The Historian

Average customer rating:

The War Complex: World War II in Our Time.(Book review): An article from: The Historian
Tami Davis Biddle
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B000VN7IVU
Release Date: 2007-09-01

Book Description

This digital document is an article from The Historian, published by Thomson Gale on December 22, 2006. The length of the article is 634 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The War Complex: World War II in Our Time.(Book review)
Author: Tami Davis Biddle
Publication: The Historian (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 22, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 68 Issue: 4 Page: 849(3)

Article Type: Book review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Book Description

This pioneering collection of essays brings together a description and analysis of women workers and the socio-economic systems of plantations world-wide. The plantation remains a formidable force in many areas of the world and new trends towards tree farming call for further examination of its agriculture. Women have, in the past, constituted a considerable precentage of the work force in this milieu, and continue to do so.

Using specific case studies of historical and contemporary plantations, an account is given of the history of female labour, focusing on the colonial and post-colonial eras. The essays examine reasons for women's degraded status and emphasize, in particular, issues relating to migrant workers.

The gradual move away from traditional family roles is, to some extent, reflected in variations in the position of the female plantation worker. However, where inequalities in class and status continue to characterize plantation life, capitalist and patriarchal control prevails.

Both chilling and bracing, the sufferings of plantation labourers may seem remote to most of us, but they are still very much part of the contemporary world. Providing a close insight into the lives of the female protagonists, these essays have given an opportunity for their stories to be heard.

Book Description

Java is an exciting new object-oriented technology. Hardware for supporting objects and other features of Java such as multithreading, dynamic linking and loading is the focus of this book. The impact of Java's features on micro-architectural resources and issues in the design of Java-specific architectures are interesting topics that require the immediate attention of the research community. While Java has become an important part of desktop applications, it is now being used widely in high-end server markets, and will soon be widespread in low-end embedded computing.

Java Microarchitectures contains a collection of papers providing a snapshot of the state of the art in hardware support for Java. The book covers the behavior of Java applications, embedded processors for Java, memory system design, and high-performance single-chip architectures designed to execute Java applications efficiently.

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