Tropical Modernism

Book Description

Tropical Modernism is a beautiful, lavishly illustrated book detailing the modernist influence on residential architecture and gardens in the tropics. Over thirty projects from Fiji to San Juan, from Brazil to India are presented in full color, complete with floor plans and landscape designs. Residential architecture has seen a strong return to the modernist vernacular world wide and no more so than in the tropics. Here expansive, open floor plans, vast walls of glass and the use of indigenous materials associated with the modern house seems so perfectly suited to the casual lifestyle found in the tropical regions.

The book presents the modernist houses of well known and emerging architects working in over twenty countries. It also shows the context in which these houses are built and shows the landscapes in which these houses are placed.

This is the first book to look at the modernist influences on residential architecture in the tropics. Equally important, it is the first to look at the modern gardens associated with these houses.

Customer Reviews:

Glossy, coffee table ,cheaply bound rubbish.......2004-11-22

What a disappointment! I was expecting something quite serious and thoughtful. This is like a glossy magazine of rich peoples homes. And how typically American- the author doesn't bother to go very much further than his own doorstep, as if the tropics ended at Mexico and the Caribbean.Nothing from Africa! Asia mentioned once! Oh and lastly my copy was unbelievably cheaply made, coming apart almost at once to reveal crude, plastic glue along the spine.

Modernist architecture and 'the tropical' in West Africa: The tropical architecture movement in West Africa, 1948-1970 [An article from: Habitat International]

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Modernist architecture and 'the tropical' in West Africa: The tropical architecture movement in West Africa, 1948-1970 [An article from: Habitat International]
O. Uduku
Manufacturer: Elsevier
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B000P6NQ64

Book Description

This digital document is a journal article from Habitat International, published by Elsevier in 2006. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
This is a short account of the evolution and development of the Tropical Architecture movement in British West Africa, from the late 1940s to the early 1970s. It considers the conceptual grounding for Tropical Architecture, its key architects and a select number of buildings that describe the era. Set in a chronological format the paper considers the socio-political, economic and aesthetic reasons for the movement's initial rise and eventual demise. Whilst focusing specifically on the architecture of British West Africa at the time, it argues that the issues being dealt with and the Tropical Architecture produced in this region had resonance and similarities to what was going on and being built elsewhere in the world, indeed that tropical architecture was a globalised phenomenon in the 1950s, well before the contemporary discourses on globalisation. It concludes by discussing the demise of the movement and the banality of the contemporary, 'post-tropical' architecture, which is prevalent in West Africa today.

Customer Reviews:

Undrwater wonder.......2007-05-14

If you are an admiral and love the beauty of the underwater threasuers, this is the book for you.

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Splendors of the Seas
Norbert Wu
Manufacturer: Konemann
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Collections, Catalogues & Exhibitions | Photography | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Nature & Wildlife | Photography | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Spanish | Foreign Language Nonfiction | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Splendors of the Seas the Photographs Of

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Splendors of the Seas the Photographs Of
Norbert Wu
Manufacturer: HUGH LAUTER LEVIN ASSOC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000SNYBEU

Distant Archipelagos: Memories of Malaya
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Distant Archipelagos: Memories of Malaya
Peter Moss
Manufacturer: iUniverse, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
Memoirs | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
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Bye-Bye Blackbird: An Anglo-Indian Memoir

No Babylon: A Hong Kong Scrapbook

ASIN: 0595773621

Book Description

He dropped money bags from low-flying biplanes on remote rubber plantations and tin mines, spent nights in deep jungle longhouses, aboard fishing kelongs manned by aboriginals far out at sea, in mosquito-infested swamps collecting malarial parasites and on beaches where giant leatherback turtles came to lay their eggs. He accompanied commonwealth troops hunting for terrorists on the Thai-Malaysian border, flew reconnaissance patrols seeking guerilla camps and escorted Field Marshal Templer on his return visit to the country he had liberated from communist insurrection.

He met Lady Edwina Mountbatten, wife of the architect of India's independence, interviewed actors Orson Welles and Sir Donald Wolfit, and was conversing with the French Ambassador when a ghost walked into the room. He worked with William Holden, Susannah York and Capucine on a film in which nearly everyone ended up miscast. He helped conceal an escaped prisoner in a hilarious fake jail-break, trailed the Sultan of Pahang on a regal progress through Malaysia's largest state and befriended one of President Soekarno's infamous red beret parachutists, sent on a sabotage mission during the height of Indonesian confrontation.

Mostly he loved the land and its people, so much that he shunned the cocktail circuit and the city life for the simple pleasures of the kampong and the open road, learning the language and feeling his way towards what French author Henry Fauconnier had called "the Soul of Malaya". With Distant Archipelagos, Peter Moss follows up his account of an Anglo-Indian childhood, in Bye-Bye Blackbird, by painting a vivid portrait of another vanished world.

Book Description

This work is available individually, or can be purchased as part of the 7 volume set Max Weber: Classic Monographs.

Customer Reviews:

Brilliant, A Classic: A Must Read for Weber Fans.......2003-10-22

I want to give a shout out to Henri Edward Dongieux who authored the Amazon.com guide to "get to know Weber and Habermas". I want to give my stand disclaimer: I am not a sociologist or a student of sociology, just a general reader with an interest in the history of ideas.

Funny story about this book: I bought Weber's theory of social and economic organization (with the foreword by Talcott Parsons). I don't know what I was thinking there. I read about thirty pages of Parsons introduction to Theory and was like, "forget this."

So then the next day I'm surfing around Amazon trying to figure out how I'm going to figure out Weber and I see the above mentioned list. Well, Henri was right: this book is THE place to start if you're looking to access the ideas of Weber.

One further digression before I actually review the book itself: Weber is hard to access for a couple of reasons: First, all his stuff has been translated from the German. This is compounded by the fact that Weber, despite his highly rigorous thought, was kind of making up terminology as he went and also by the fact that German has tons of words that don't translate well into English.
Second, Weber kind of died before he finished pulling together the various strands of his grand theory together, leaving his work uncomplete.

So, preliminary matters aside, I will move on to a description of the book. Since this is the first review of this work on Amazon (and how can that be?). I will provide a non-judgmental description of content and then a few observations.

The book is divided into three Parts. Part One is called "German Society and The Protestant Ethic". Part Two is "Society, Religion, and Secular Ethic: A Comparitive Study of Civilisations" and Part Three is "Domination, Organization, and Legitimacy: Max Weber's Political Sociology". Before Part One, Bendix includes an introduction and a chapter on Weber's "Career and Personal Orientation". That first chapter is most illuminating and serves to ground Weber in place and time.

The first part of the book is divided into two chapters. The first chapter talks about his very interesting early studies of eastern german agarian society and the various german stock exchanges. Bendix refers to these two early studies over and over through out the book. The second chapter of the first part of the book discusses Weber's most popular and well known ideas about the protestant work ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Having laid out the touchstones of Weber's work, Bendix moves into part two, which concern Weber's studies of world religion.

Part two deals exclusively with Weber's interest in world religion. Bendix devotes a chapter each to his studies of China, India and Palestine. Bendix notes that it is obvious that Weber's main interest was in the roots of the west that he found in Palestine and so the chapters on China and India are of limited use (except as a guide to what Weber THOUGHT about China and Indian religion. Bendix concludes part two with a chapter summarizing Weber's "sociology of religion".

Part three has a similar structure to part two. Bendix runs off a couple of chapters on charsmatic domination and traditional domination as a means to explicate Weber's theories of "Legal Domination" which represent, perhaps, Weber's main achievment. Again, Bendix points out that Weber's interest in chasmatic domination and traditional domination are really only "foils" for his overriding interest in "legal domination", in the same way that his studies of India and China are foils for his interest in the society of ancient Palestine.

In part three, Bendix also includes a couple of chapters that tie the book together and link the three parts, as well as a further attempt to ground Weber in the thought of his day.

OK, so that is the descriptive part. Now, some observations:

First off, as someone who really didn't know anything about Weber's thought (outside of a cursory understanding of his thesis in the "Spirit of Capitalism"), I found this book to be immensely compelling.

One can dismiss all of Weber's substantive conclusions about the nature of society and government and still be Wowed by the tremendous influence he has had on all social thinkers in the past century. I now see Weber's influence everywhere I look!

I also feel like any further attempts to read Weber will be made about a thousand times easier becaue I have read this book.

Although I read all but about twenty pages of this five hundred page book, I believe one could derive the same meaning from reading chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 12,13, and 15, while skipping the rest.

This book also has a handy index!

Max Weber - An Intellectual Portrait
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Max Weber - An Intellectual Portrait
Reinhard Bendix
Manufacturer: Doubleday & Company, Inc., New York
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000KYG4MO

Max Weber an Intellectual Portrait
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Max Weber an Intellectual Portrait
Reinhard Bendix
Manufacturer: DOUBLEDAY & CO INC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000UCBB6U

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Max Weber an Intellectual Portrait
Reinhard Bendix
Manufacturer: DOUBLEDAY & CO INC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000SN9LWC

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Max Weber an Intellectual Portrait
Reinhard Bendix
Manufacturer: DOUBLEDAY ANCHOR BOOK
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000SF6QYQ

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Max Weber an Intellectual Portrait
Reinhard Bendix
Manufacturer: DOUBLEDAY ANCHOR BOOK
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000UDVLLO

Max Weber: An intellectual portrait
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Max Weber: An intellectual portrait
Reinhard Bendix
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General | Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Sociobiology | Anthropology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0520035038

Book Description

Max Weber is considered by many to be the sociologist and political scientist of the twentieth century. This companion volume to Max Weber: Critical Assessments (1), presents a representative selection of the scholarship which analyzes Weber's political, legal, economic, and historical work in greater detail, and conforms to a wider debate about the relevance of Weber's historical and political thought to contemporary concerns.

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Max Weber: an intellectual portrait
Reinhard Bendix
Manufacturer: Methuen
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0006DFZ2O

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Max Weber; an intellectual portrait
Reinhard Bendix
Manufacturer: DoubleDay
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0007EL2QK

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Max Weber; an intellectual portrait
Reinhard Bendix
Manufacturer: DoubleDay
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000O5YXMC

On the Bottom: The Raising of the U. S. Navy Submarine S-51
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Ellsberg is an unrecognized icon of the US Navy

On the Bottom

On the Bottom: The Raising of the U. S. Navy Submarine S-51
Commander Edward Ellsberg
Manufacturer: Amazon Remainders Account
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Military | History | Subjects | Books
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Descent into Darkness

ASIN: B000BTH5NA

Book Description

In a collision with a steamship, City of Rome, on the night of September 25, 1925, the U.S. Navy Submarine S-51 sank in 132 feet of water, taking 33 sailors to the ocean floor. This is the story of the men charged with doing the impossible-raising the thousand ton sub from the bottom of the sea. Added to this modern classic of true adventure are a foreword and afterword giving specifics of the accident and the aftermath, additional photographs, a publisher's preface, and appendices.

Customer Reviews:

Ellsberg is an unrecognized icon of the US Navy.......2005-08-21

When I was a kid, browsing a used book sale at a mall in San Antonio, I bought a book named "Thirty Fathoms Deep" by Commander Edward Ellsberg. It was a pretty good yarn about diving on sunken treasure, not very plausible but a good read. I still have the book, and a few years ago (probably after reading "Run Silent, Run Deep") I started wondering who this Ellsberg guy was, especially as there were a bunch of other books by him printed on the flyleaf of "Thirty Fathoms Deep". Google to the rescue - I found a website containing the US Navy report on the raising of the S-51 (which seemed to be the "Columbia" incident of its day) in 1926, written by Ellsberg. Here was the source of technical themes repeated in "Thirty Fathoms Deep" and I read it thoroughly. In spite of the dry Navy language, it was a thrilling story, and then I read "On The Bottom". This book is more or less the same information found in the Navy report, of course, but with a more human touch. While still somewhat dry and full of technical details, the picture painted is one of men struggling to perform a herculean task in extreme conditions with primitive tools (some invented as they went along), against cruel setbacks seemingly thrown by a pantheon of laughing gods. This is truth on par with Spielbergian fiction and worth a movie, with no embellishment required.

On the Bottom.......2003-05-06

A fantastic reprint of one of the all time classics of the sea. The introduction by Captain Ned Beach is a wonderful tribute to Admiral Edward Ellsberg and the book includes a CD recording of the 1925 hit song "The Sinking of Submarine S-51," and a DVD of period newsreel footage. It's a must for any naval history buff!

Book Description

This political narrative of the rise and fall of the Tudor monarchy examines the relationship between the crown and the aristocracy. It looks at how this relationship was affected by the actions of the monarchs and the changes in composition of the aristocracy. It begins with the chaos of factional quarrels which marked English political life under Henry VI in the 1450s and then examines the building up of the strength of law and habit of obedience under Henry VII and Henry VIII; the crises under Mary; the peak of Tudor monarchy under Elizabeth I; its decline under James I; the drift into constitutional stalemate and civil war under Charles I; and the final collapse of the Tudor monarchy.

Politics and the Nation, 1450-1660 (Fontana History of England)

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Politics and the Nation, 1450-1660 (Fontana History of England)
D.M. Loades
Manufacturer: Fontana Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

Book Description

Research is never free of pressures and constraints and to understand its results properly these have to be assessed and analyzed. In agriculture, research into biotechnology and GMOs as well as pesticides and herbicides is big business - agribusiness. This book looks at the crucial roles of funding and the political context on the research agenda and its results in agricultural development. It provides the first critical evaluation of the participatory methods now widely used, and explores the ways in which research into biotechnology have reflected the interests of the various parties involved.

Science, Agriculture and Research: A Compromised Participation

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Science, Agriculture and Research: A Compromised Participation
Stephen Morse
Manufacturer: NY
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000MUA7TW

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