Frank Lloyd Wright: The Interactive Portfolio

Book Description

Fortunately for the many admirers of his architecture, theories, and designs, Frank Lloyd Wright was not only a lover of space and a man of vision--he was also a man who liked to save things. Since he opened his first office in Chicago in 1893, Wright held on to drawings, sketches, notes, photographs, manuscripts, and correspondence. Many of those artifacts survive today in his official archive at Taliesin West in Arizona. Produced in conjunction with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, this extraordinary book offers a fresh presentation of the documents of one of the world's most famous architects. It is, in effect, a museum in a book. The unique book experience contains 25 interactive, three-dimensional features, removable facsimiles of original documents, never-before-published architectural sketches, and an audio CD containing excerpts from Wright's weekly addresses at his architectural compound, as well as television interviews. Following the proven success of other Wright titles, this is an engaging journey into the life and work of the iconic American architect through words, pictures, and artifacts.

Customer Reviews:

A super book.......2007-07-08

This is a unique book, nothing else like it around. A great coffee table book or a gift for anyone interested in architecture or the works of Frank Lloyd Wright.
Highly recommended.

Very cool.......2007-06-21

A must-have for FLW fans. Can be found remaindered for less but this price is decent. Make sure its in good shape. Well-made, written & produced, worth every penny.

Introduction to FLW visions and growth.......2007-04-04

My first real adventure into FLW's buildings and his visions. I was amazed at the vast size of his buildings and use of nature and the surroundings. Hearing him on the DVD brought additional insights. Review his drawings and letters included. A world of new experience for me.

A Look Inside his Life.......2005-01-24

This book is almost a scrapbook that you might have collected if you had gone through life at Frank Lloyd Wright's side. It's got a book in it, but it's not very big. There an Audio CD of him speaking at various interviews, lectures and other talks. There are removable facsimilies of original documents, both photographs and never before published architectural sketches. There are some hand written notes written by him, including a hand drawn wedding invitation. In short, this is a collection of things that Frank Lloyd Wright saved. It appears that he liked to save things, and remarkably much of it remains in the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona. It's fascinating to look into the life of a genius.

A Book You Have Been Waiting For.......2004-10-22

Readers are likely to discover that this is a book they have been waiting for. Margo Stipe leads readers through various stages of Frank Lloyd Wright's life with remarkably lucid and concise writing. While countless books on Wright include stunning pictures like the ones appearing here, this book's distinctive design sets it apart. Throughout one finds illustrative documents bound into the pages, or in envelope-like enclosures, or in page-size translucent sleeves, or on foldout pages. Handling them gives one a sense of having been present at their creation. Listening to the 60-minute compact disk of excerpts from Wright's speeches and interviews, pocketed inside the cover, has the same effect. This "interactive portfolio" is certain to claim a place in the library of persons wishing to learn more about Frank Lloyd Wright. Offered at a bargain price, it will bring its readers immeasurable pleasures.

Book Description

The bark of a plane tree in Paris, a detail of a cotton towel in Japan, sunset in the Egyptian desert, soil from Yosemite, a tiled floor in Bangkok, a wall in Ferrara, an iron cart wheel in Antwerp.... Colors, textures, forms, and shapes are the basis of this unique book that reveals the elements common to all design and literally teaches us how to see. Hauntingly beautiful and deeply instructive, it surveys the environment, natural and man-made, showing how it can be defined in terms of basic elements: variable arrangements of dots; lines that are straight, curving, bending, or crossing; planes such as rectangles, squares, lozenges, triangles, and circles. All these are represented, with telling juxtapositions, in a wide range of materials and techniques, in one sense timeless and universal, in another datable and culturally conditioned. Ever-recurring design elements, they take us to the heart of the creative process: a transformation that may involve inspiration or imitation, representation or interpretation. Destined to become a cult book for artists, designers, and craftspeople, this amazing volume is a reminder of how the search for something new is a voyage of rediscovery into past and present form. 177 color photographs.

Customer Reviews:

Useless.......2004-02-12

This is not a book that will teach you much of anything. Not about design, or the elements of design, or how various design elements might be used either separately or in conjunction to evoke feelings or images.

The book is broken into sections, one for each design element such as color, texture, etc. The first page of each section is a very general description of that design element. This is then followed by 15 pages or so of full-page pictures highlighting that design element. Looking at 15 pages of colorful objects or highly textured objects may be mildly interesting but it isn't terribly informative or useful.

This book may be marginally adequate if you just want to flip through the pictures looking for inspiration. But the pictures are largely mediocre and too few to really exhaust the topics at hand so it isn't even terribly useful as inspiration. No matter what your needs or purpose you would do well to pass on this book and look for something better.

An amazing treat for the eyes.......2002-06-06

The Elements Of Design: Rediscovering Colors, Textures, Forms And Shapes is a joint-project by Amsterdam exhibitions curator Loan Oei and Antwerp based Decile De Kegel, a graduate in textile design and weaving expert. The heart of Elements Of Design lies not in words, for it contains precious few of those, but rather in the stunning, full-color, full-page photographs that fill it cover to cover. Each photograph presents a different, majestic juxtaposition of colors, shapes, patterns, and fascinating medleys in this inspirational book created specifically to motivate artists and designers everywhere. An amazing treat for the eyes and especially recommended for personal and professional fabric-based art and needlecraft reference collections, The Elements Of Design is a beautiful and varied book sure to open one's eyes to brand new possibilities for artistic creation.

Customer Reviews:

From the Publisher.......2005-11-13

"From schoolgirls on monkey bars to grandmas at a fair, from best-friends-forever to confidantes at work, this book of postcards presents thirty vintage portraits of everyday women and girls in the company of one another. Women everywhere will recognize their moms, their sisters, their friends, and themselves in these evocative images captured by a variety of photographers, including such masters as Marion Post Wolcott, Dorothea Lange, and Russell Lee--a visual celebration of the pleasures, complexities, and abiding comforts of female friendship. 30 duotone photographs.

"Pomegranate's books of postcards contain thirty top-quality reproductions bound together in a handy, artful collection. Easy to remove and produced on heavy card stock, these stunning postcards are a delight to the sender and receiver. ISBN: 0-87654-907-5; size: 4 3/4 x 6 7/8"."--© Pomegranate

Book Description

Steel and iron, bone and blood, Aufstrag is the heart of the Winter Dark and its power. This massive tomb relates the myriad dangers of the glooming towers of Aufstrag in a megalithic adventure. Designed for high level characters, Aufstrag promises to supply the enterprising CK with a host of adventures and adventuring hooks. Complete with maps, illustration and a cover design by Rick Sardhina this adventure promises to bring the fear of the dark to the gaming table.

Book Description

The author, a veteran Chicago Tribune reporter, tells his life story from beginnings in Indiana, work for the Chicago City News Bureau, then early reporting for the Tribune followed by nearly five years of Army service in World War II. Resuming his career after the war, he completed 33 years with the Tribune. This was followed by work as Public Affairs manager for the Chicago Transit Authority, press secretary for former Chicago Mayor Jane Burn and finally 12 years teaching journalism at Loyola University, Chicago.

Tom Buck writes about the people he covered, from presidents to restaurant waitresses, from crime figures to University of Illinois trustees, from a speaker who died on the platform to a sailor who figured out how to beat City Hall.

Average customer rating:
"What's up, Doc?": Screenplay
Buck Henry
Manufacturer: s.n
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Screenplays | Movies | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
General | Foreign Languages | Reference | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B0007CD1DO

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Exploiting Consecutive Ones Structure in the Set Partitioning Problem

Manufacturer: Storming Media
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Spiral-bound
ASIN: 1423531779

Product Description

This is a NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL MONTEREY CA report procured by the Pentagon and made available for public release. It has been reproduced in the best form available to the Pentagon. It is not spiral-bound, but rather assembled with Velobinding in a soft, white linen cover. The Storming Media report number is A105783. The abstract provided by the Pentagon follows: The Set Partitioning Problem (SPP) is one of the most extensively researched models in integer optimization, and is widely applied in operations research. SPP is used for crew scheduling, vehicle routing, stock cutting, production scheduling, and many other combinatorial problems. The power and generality of SPP come at a price: An SPP can be very difficult to solve. A real-world SPP often has columns, or rows, with long strings of consecutive ones. We exploit this with a new preprocessing reduction that can eliminate some variables. We also introduce a column-splitting technique to render a model that can be solved directly or used to bound SPP with Lagrangian relaxation or an exterior penalty method. We develop an SPP row- splitting method that yields a special model that Bender's decomposition may then solve faster than the monolithic SPP. We demonstrate these techniques with well-known test problems from airlines and other researchers. We also contribute a new U.S. Navy aircraft carrier long-term deployment scheduling model, using our new techniques to plan with weekly fidelity over a ten-year planning horizon. This improved time fidelity increases planned deployment coverage of areas of responsibility by about ten carrier weeks.

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A Life of Adventure and Courage
Inspiring memoir!
A truly inspirational adventure book!!!
OH, MY GOSH! What a story!
Amazing and Fascinating Story!

ONE WAVE AT A TIME
Billy Bryan Brown
Manufacturer: Booklocker.com, Inc. and VIP Partners
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Family Health | Parenting & Families | Subjects | Books

General | Parenting & Families | Subjects | Books

Adventurers & Explorers | Specific Groups | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1601453000

Book Description

A true adventure of how a scared boy, orphaned at sixteen, grew to be a dad and husband of character as he fought to survive in the wilderness of Alaska, while running from the emptiness left by his childhood loss.

Customer Reviews:

A Life of Adventure and Courage.......2007-10-18

Most people live comfortable, if mundane lives - going to work, raising families, making ends meet. Billy Bryan Brown and his family took a decidedly different path, living a life of adventure and challenge that almost staggers belief. From criss-crossing the country doing odd jobs to living off the land on a desolate island to skippering a fishing boat in Arctic waters to prospecting for gold in Alaska, Brown's life exemplifies the independent spirit and wanderlust that our pioneering forefathers knew, but that has been largely lost in our structured and regimented modern world. Perhaps the real hero of this story is Billy's plucky wife, who experienced all the excitement, danger and hardship at his side - and pregnant most of the time (the couple have seven children).

While subsequent editions of the book would benefit from proofing and editing to correct some spelling and grammatical issues, readers should not be deterred from reading the book. Its message of empowerment, determination and family bonds, in the context of a rip-roaring adventure tale, make this a great read.

Inspiring memoir!.......2007-10-16

This is a beautiful and inspiring story of a man's courageous quest to follow his dream in the Alaskan wilderness -- always with the loving support of his family. Often facing great dangers and hardships, they continued to strive for that elusive goal. This would make a great movie! I recommend this book for wholesome family reading. My heart goes out to this wonderful family!

A truly inspirational adventure book!!!.......2007-10-10

I absolutely loved this book! An incredible adventure! I feel like I have now been to Alaska and the hair on the back of my neck is still standing straight up since reading how Billy went face to face with the bear!
It is so nice to know that there are still families out there that believe in living their dreams; that love each other undconditionally and stand by each other no matter what. A true inspiration!
This book...no, this family made me laugh out loud and cry like a baby through-out the book.

OH, MY GOSH! What a story!.......2007-10-07

Title: One Wave at a Time A True Story
Author: Billy Bryan Brown
Publisher: VIP Partners
Author's Web site: [...]
ISBN: 978-1-60145-300-6
Pages: 213
Reviewer: Yvonne Perry ([...])
Review date: October 6, 2007

One Wave at a Time tells of a miraculous true life adventure only ninety-nine percent of us could ever dream of, let alone live and survive. Billy Bryan Brown has done just that. Brown articulates vivid living imagery in a colloquial style as though you're sitting with him beside a fire, seeing the colors of the flames and smelling the aromas of the burning wood.

Brown starts the journey as he describes the loss of his family in a tragic accident, followed by the complete destruction of the privileged life he had always known. Suddenly, at sixteen years of age, Billy Bryan Brown was cast into a world of unknown. Wandering the countryside from Canada to Mexico, he worked odd jobs, unable to find that "something" to fill the churning emptiness he describes. Then, he saw Ami. It was love at first sight.

This modern day pioneer, lead by a stirring deep in his soul and supported by his equally adventurous wife Ami, took off one day for the wilds of the Alaskan bush country with little more than their blind enthusiasm and love for one another. Page after page, Brown relentlessly pours out one harrowing story after another about their seemingly fool-hearted quest. All the while, one slowly gathers an appreciation for their inner strength and developing awareness of the wild land and scary sea they call home.

One Wave at a Time is a story of trust, of surviving on the most basic of needs: meat, warmth and water. As mankind has done since his arrival on this planet, the Brown's learned how to adapt to their ever changing environment. They become hunter-gatherers in order to overcome one obstacle at a time, discover valuable life lessons, and ascertain that life's simplest treasures are the ones that truly make life worth living.

Like the Beverly Hillbillies on steroids, the Browns become the consummate Alaskans as they live the Alaskan creed: take only what you need, use all that you have, when you no longer need it, give it to someone who does. Brown weaves his tale just as he had lived it with straight-forward, simple, honest talk. There is no need to embellish these heroic tales when it comes to describing the hair-raising horrific sounds coming from the monsters in the night, or standing face to face with a twelve-foot tall grizzly bear ready to demolish them, or a raging bull moose ready to push the entire family over a cliff. From fishing boats on the roughest Pacific seas to the remotest spot of land in North America, day after day the Browns tackle seemingly insurmountable odds. Whether it was finding wood, food, water, medical care, or their house burning down, where there was a will, there was a way, One Wave at a Time.

Amazing and Fascinating Story!.......2007-09-23

This autobiography is one of those "can't put it down" reads, yet each chapter is strong enough to stand alone. 13 Chapters of situations in the life of a man, woman and their 7 children living in the deepest wilderness of the bush of Alaska and aboard tiny fishing boats in the unforgiving Alaskan waters!!
To read of the near maniacal-like quest of a scared and desperate young boy, born into wealth,suddenly orphaned and reduced to a state of homelessness at 16 as he tries to fill the void inside is in itself captivating.
But the real story begins when he, with a wife and two toddlers end up stranded for 18 months on a desolate island off the shores of Alaska, where he begins to find his way as a man is absolutely one of the most incredible stories I have ever heard or read...and that is only chapter one.
How he,his wife, and now 7 children, after 20 plus years of living in the "bush" staving off bears, wolves and moose, while surviving sub-zero winters to emerge victorious is beyond my wildest imagination.
What a story...what an inspiration...and what an ending!!!
A MUST read for nearly anyone!!

Average customer rating:

They lived the dream! Read about it!

One Wave at a Time
Ed Atkin , and Bernie Houston
Manufacturer: Virtualbookworm.com Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Travel | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Memoirs | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0966606612

Book Description

It has been great fun organizing our collection of letters, accounts, thoughts and memories into this tale of an incredible 20-year adventure; reliving a tropical paradise, exploring a rain forest, a high mountain. Fleeing in terror from pirates. Camping with wild animals in Africa. It began so long ago. How very little we knew of the life ahead. How our senses would be stretched and filled. We have experienced so much more than we ever envisioned. Now we find ourselves at another crossroads. What do we really want to do next- we have hardly more than scratched the surface of this wonderful planet? Shall we go on traveling and exploring? Should we make short or long trips? Visit warm climes, or cold? Establish a land base? A permanent home for Oriana? In the United States? On which coast? In which State? How about New Zealand or South Africa? We are planners and dreamers. Travelers, explorers and provisioners. Savers and innovators. Foragers, readers, relaxers . . loners. The drummer we followed: a child, unbound. Our world only limited by imagination. How could we ever be the same?

Customer Reviews:

They lived the dream! Read about it!.......2003-04-20

This is a wonderful book for a number of reasons. First because the authors decided to live life on their terms and they succeeded. They followed their dream and it took them around the world. How many people do you know who have sailed around the globe in a 40 foot sailboat? Not many I'll bet.

The book is wonderful too because the authors managed to pack so many of their adventures into it. These range from being chased by pirates in the Philippines to sailing through impossible weather and fifty foot seas in the Atlantic, a storm that brought them to the edge of survival, to descriptions of tropical paradises that will blow your mind, to personal encounters with many many people in a wide variety of different lands and cultures.

Ed and Bernie spent long periods of time ashore also, exploring different places as they went. The book doubles as a travelogue of New Zealand, Africa, and other ports of call. The authors are keen observers of nature and the environment, and their discussions of pollution, over population, and the destruction of coral reefs are always interesting and on target. The book is loaded with great photos of their trip, that keep you page-turning.

In the end, the personal always shines through. The book is a valuable record of exploration of solitude and at-one-ness with nature. It will draw you back again and you will enjoy rereading ONE WAVE AT A TIME as much the second time as the first. The authors are self-described planners and adventurers -- and maybe the most valuable lesson of all is the discovery and rediscovery of self-reliance, what we can accomplish when we believe in ourselves and cut ourselves some slack. Don't miss it.

Average customer rating:
M-Shaped Boat Hull Helps Save Venice One Wave at a Time. (Newsmakers).(Mangia Onda Co. sells boat to city of Venice, Italy)(Brief Article): An article from: San Diego Business Journal
Lee Zion
Manufacturer: CBJ, L.P.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B0008IIRIQ
Release Date: 2005-06-01

Book Description

This digital document is an article from San Diego Business Journal, published by CBJ, L.P. on November 19, 2001. The length of the article is 5892 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: M-Shaped Boat Hull Helps Save Venice One Wave at a Time. (Newsmakers).(Mangia Onda Co. sells boat to city of Venice, Italy)(Brief Article)
Author: Lee Zion
Publication: San Diego Business Journal (Magazine/Journal)
Date: November 19, 2001
Publisher: CBJ, L.P.
Volume: 22 Issue: 47 Page: 32(1)

Article Type: Brief Article

Distributed by Thomson Gale

The response of soils to dynamic loadings: Report no. 17 : stress-strain-time behavior of soil in one dimensional compression ([Contract report - U.S. ... Experiment Station ; no. 3-26, Report 17])

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The response of soils to dynamic loadings: Report no. 17 : stress-strain-time behavior of soil in one dimensional compression ([Contract report - U.S. ... Experiment Station ; no. 3-26, Report 17])
Robert V Whitman
Manufacturer: Dept. of Civil Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Stress Management | Self-Help | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

Soil Science | Agricultural Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B0007EWLFG

The space-time conservation element and solution element method--a new high-resolution and genuinely multidimensional paradigm for solving conservation laws (SuDoc NAS 1.15:208844)

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The space-time conservation element and solution element method--a new high-resolution and genuinely multidimensional paradigm for solving conservation laws (SuDoc NAS 1.15:208844)
Xiao-Yen Wang
Manufacturer: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Lewis Research Center National Technical Information Service, distributor
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B00010ZZ3Q

Time-dependent structure of one-dimensional magnetic compression waves in collisionless plasmas: Oblique ambient magnetic field (NASA technical note)

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Time-dependent structure of one-dimensional magnetic compression waves in collisionless plasmas: Oblique ambient magnetic field (NASA technical note)
Vernon J Rossow
Manufacturer: National Aeronautics and Space Administration ; [For sale by the Clearinghouse for Federal Scientific and Technical Information, Springfield, Virginia 22151]
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

WAVE: A computer program for one-dimensional stress wave analysis in a time-dependent inelastic rock using a generalized Voigt model (Information circular ... Department of the Interior, Bureau of Mines)

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WAVE: A computer program for one-dimensional stress wave analysis in a time-dependent inelastic rock using a generalized Voigt model (Information circular ... Department of the Interior, Bureau of Mines)
Stephen Gerard Sawyer
Manufacturer: U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Bureau of Mines
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Rocks & Minerals | Nature & Ecology | Science | Subjects | Books

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Succeeding Against the Odds: How the Learning-Disabled Can Realize Their Promise
Sally L. Smith
Manufacturer: G P Putnam's Sons
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000NY469E

Amazon.com

"The characteristic act of men at war is not dying, it is killing".

With that unsettling--yet incontrovertible--assertion, Joanna Bourke opens her investigation of how servicemen deal with the most willfully ignored of wartime activities. Drawing on private letters and diaries of men (and a few women) from the First and Second World Wars and Vietnam, she shows not only how military men talk of their fears and anxieties--familiar enough territory--but also how they talk of joy and pleasure: the physical, sexual excitement of killing other men.

In its own right, the material--lucidly and wittily handled--is fascinating enough. But across Britain, the U.S., and Australia, across three distinct wars, the same stories come through loud and clear: the joy of a man-to-man combat, which, ironically, became less and less common through the century. As Bourke shows, these powerful stories were influenced by the combat tales in magazines, novels, and films that enthralled boys across generations. In the end, despite the best efforts of the military, the experience of war cannot be prepared for.

Some may have reservations about Bourke's conclusions, but the huge mass of detail she brings to light in An Intimate History of Killing forces us at the very least to reconsider those easy clichés about the brutalizing, traumatizing effects of war. --Alan Stewart, Amazon.co.uk

Book Description

An explosive new book that puts the killing back into military history.

The characteristic act of men at war is not dying, but killing. Politicians and military historians may gloss over human slaughter, emphasizing the defense of national honor, but for men in active service, warfare means being - or becoming - efficient killers. In An Intimate History of Killing, historian Joanna Bourke asks: What are the social and psychological dynamics of becoming the best "citizen soldiers?" What kind of men become the best killers? How do they readjust to civilian life?

These questions are answered in this groundbreaking new work that won, while still in manuscript, the Fraenkel Prize for Contemporary History. Excerpting from letters, diaries, memoirs, and reports of British, American, and Australian veterans of three wars (World War I, World War II, and Vietnam), Bourke concludes that the structure of war encourages pleasure in killing and that perfectly ordinary, gentle human beings can, and often do, become enthusiastic killers without being brutalized.

This graphic, unromanticized look at men at war is sure to revise many long-held beliefs about the nature of violence.

Customer Reviews:

Terrible Editing.......2007-04-13

Tedious to read at time, the most glaring fault I found was the poor editing. Now and again, pages don't line up. A sentence will end on one page and not line up with the one on the next page. Extremely irritating. That such a glaring series of errors made it into a final print is astonishing.

Tripe:.......2007-02-03

This is an unimpressive book on an important subject. It has several major flaws as pointed out in other reviews, and does seem to be a case of the author starting with a hypothesis and then slanting her research to back up her own theory.

Though Dave Grossman also cites the writings of SLA Marshall, whose findings have been the subject of much controversy, his book "On Killing" is vastly better in every respect.

Incomplete.......2006-07-27

Dr. Bourke has gathered a very impressive list of sources with which she has saturated her text. She does not, however, offer any deep insights in regards to her material other than making a few obvious remarks. Despite the fact that Bourke has written books on the history of psychological thought and the history of emotions, she seems to shy away from drawing anything other than the most general conclusions such as on page 99 when she declares that "combativeness was thus inscribed on the male physique." Also, practically every source she cites is secondary and she continually quotes from a comparatively large number of "unnamed" soldiers and veterans. This, despite the sheer amount of information Bourke has collected, detracts from the credibility of her material.

Dr. Bourke explains that her focus is narrowed and only takes into consideration material involving American, British, and Australian combatants. She further narrows her consideration by limiting herself to both World Wars and Vietnam. At least twice in her book, Bourke makes mention of and uses source material from the Korean War and at least one source from a 19th century conflict. For such an intriguing subject, Bourke seems to have narrowed herself too much and steps outside her own scope.

Dr. Joanna Bourke's book contains some major flaws, such as her use of S. L. A. Marshall's statistics, and other more minor ones, such as her frequently shallow conclusions. With such an interesting topic, it seems a shame to have narrowed it as much as she did. Much of her thesis would have benefited from taking Germany, Russia, and Japan during World War II into consideration. She does provide a large body of source material, even if it is predominately secondary and/or anonymous. Unfortunately, other than bombarding the reader with citations and quotations from her sources, Bourke does not seem to do much else with her material. If only she had taken this a little farther, it could have offered some eye-opening insights into the true nature of war.

Also, this particular edition of Bourke's book (I have not checked other editions) exhibits a complete failure of editing. The subject matter itself is fascinating, but the missing segments and/or pages makes it extremely difficult to maintain flow. So far there have been a number of instances of editing failure: on page 2 the last word is not finished on the following page and the text is interrupted. The same thing happens on pages 3, 14, 15, 16, 44, and 88. There are a number of missing pages. These are just the discrepancies I can identify. I have no idea how much text is actually missing. All told, don't buy this edition.

frustrating book........2006-04-27

"This book aims to put killing back into military history."

no kidding! that's like saying "I'm going to put the 'ball' back in 'football'!" that line had me suspicious... other lines clearly suggest that the author is bringing more than a little of her own "gender" war into the scenario as well. she makes no effort to be "objective" and easily and gleefully casts judgement on virtually every subject she bothers to discuss. the following quote is revealing:

"Historians have been rightly cautious about passing judgement on people in the past, but this must be done if we are to grant servicemen and -women in the past an active, creative role in the making of their own histories"

my first reaction was "what the hell?" so, by self-righteously passing judgement on people in the past (imagining ourselves to be better in the process) we're helping THEM play an active role in "making" their own histories? that sentence alone proved the author's TRUE motives were not in producing a serious academic or scholarly work on the nature of warfare and killing.

since part of her focus is how the culture deals with warfare and killing--she feels at liberty to quote movie directors, military historians, novels, and soldiers with equal credibility!

Dave Grossman's book "On Killing" is more concise, more carefully documented, and better written.

her bibliographic references ARE impressive. and yet she only scratches the surface on some issues. particularly regarding fighter pilots (which is my area of pseudo-expertise). the joy they took in "killing" was often merely a "sporting attitude" they had. dehumanizing their "kills" or "victories" helped them do the job. very few fighter pilots actively took joy in killing their victims. again, Grossman does a better job of exploring this issue.

Should be 0 stars!.......2005-05-17

Reads more like a blog-rant than a book. The author bends facts to meet her view of reality. Her agenda is clear from the start. If she understood the references she quotes it would be a better book.

An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-face Killing in Twentieth-century Warfare

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An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-face Killing in Twentieth-century Warfare

Manufacturer: Granta
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000GX1TBU

Average customer rating:

Intimate History of Killing: Face to Face Killing In Twentieth Century Warfare
Joanna Bourke
Manufacturer: BASIC BOOKS
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OJLOAC

Book Description

Burt studies the effects of the 19th century labour trade, colonial subjugation and the subsequent Christian conversion. He examines the anti-colonial Maasina Rule movement of the 1940s and finally illustrates the subsequent efforts of Kwara'ae leaders to regain their self-determination and to reaffirm the values of "tradition" under Christianity.
The Kwara'ae example of colonialism and Christianity is part of the broader experience of Melanesia and of other peoples in the Third World who once lived a tribal life. The detailed local focus, based on a year of fieldwork, provides valuable evidence essential to a wider comparative analysis of colonial history and the continuing development of indigenous Christianity from an anthropological and a historical perspective.
Tradition and Christianity explores how and why a Pacific Islands people, fiercely attached to the tradition of their ancestors, have transformed their society by changing their religion. The book describes the traditional

Book Description

Presenting a wide-ranging view of current developments in protein research, the papers in this collection, each written by highly regarded experts in the field, examine various aspects of protein structure, functions, dynamics, and experimentation. Topics include dynamical simulation methods, the biological role of atom fluctuations, protein folding, influences on protein dynamics, and a variety of analytical techniques, such as X-ray diffraction, vibrational spectroscopy, photodissociation and rebinding kinetics. This is part of a series devoted to providing general information on a wide variety of topics in chemical physics in order to stimulate new research and to serve as a text for beginners in a particular area of chemical physics.

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