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Cosmetic Makeup Artist's Manual
Bernice Kentner
Manufacturer: Kenkra Pubs
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 General
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ASIN: 0941522105 |
Book Description
Everyone who reads DILBERT" and works in an office will appreciate this newest collection, Dilbert Gives You the Business. Creator Scott Adams tells it like it is through the insane business world inhabited by Dilbert. If frustration and lunacy are an inevitable part of your workday, appropriate measures must be taken immediately. Andrews McMeel has the perfect antidote to your workplace stress. After 10 years of syndication, Dilbert is universally recognized as the definitive source of office humor. What makes this 14th Dilbert book so unique is that it is a collection of the most popular strips requested by fans for reprints and downloads from Dilbert.com gathered together for the first time. Arranged by topics for quick reference, this hilarious book is the comprehensive Dilbert source book, sure to alleviate work burnout. Packed within these colorful pages, fans will find all their favorite characters, including Dilbert, as he encounters daily issues from delegating to decision-making, trade shows to telecommuting, and downsizing to annoying coworkers. It's business as usual for the Dilbert clan. . . . Dilbert is continually updating his résumé, Dogbert continues his pursuit of world domination, Wally strives to do the least amount of work possible, and Alice is eternally frustrated by the Boss. Welcome to the all-too-familiar world of Dilbert-the lowly engineer who has become an icon for oppressed and burntout workers everywhere! The most popular business-oriented cartoon in the world, Dilbert speaks to millions of fans who toil in the corporate trenches. No matter how outrageous a tale he spins, Dilbert creator Scott Adams inserts sufficient nuggets of truth in every strip to keep his believers laughing. In part, that's because Dilbert is based on his own former corporate experiences-and is kept current by culling inspiration from the 350-plus E-mails he receives each day. Keep Dilbert Gives You the Business close at hand-as you would your phone book, Internet diversion tool.browser, and any other work .
Customer Reviews:
Excellent best-of compendium........2006-02-17
This book is a collection of many of the best of the Dilbert Strips, organized according to subject matter. If you don't have all of the previous Dilbert collections, this is a very good way to get many of the best of the previous strips all in one book. But even if you DO have all the previous books, it's not without value to have so many of the best strips all in one book, so conveniently organized. Granted there's no new material here, which some might consider a flaw worth docking the book at least a star for, but as reprint collections go, it's a fabulous collection.
Very funny stuff.......2005-05-02
Dilbert knows office humor and this book is a compilation, by topic, of some of Adams' best work over a 10 year period. I love Dilbert, so this book is a lot of fun.
However, I will warn you - having the strips arranged by topic takes some of the humor out of it - a whole section of strips dedicated to "Secretaries" for instance, is not nearly as funny as just seeing an occasional barb. Can you imagine Seinfeld doing his comedy routine by subject? "Ok, here are all my jokes about women", now onto "cookies" - no, it just doesn't work as well. I prefer the straight timeline accumulations. And you will find yourself rereading strips you have seen in other Dilbert books too.
But overall, a fine collection - I still think it's great - it just could be better.
Great compilation for the casual fan.......2004-03-21
I'm not a Dilbert fanatic, but I sure have been getting a kick out of the strip lately and decided to break down and buy my first hardbound Scott Adams. Many of these made me laugh out loud. It's a good book to have around when you need a laugh about work. The way the book is broken down into categories. Great layout. The hardbound edition has the graphics printed on the cover itself, in addition to the dust jacket. (How many hardbounds do this??? Must be more expensive). When the dust jacket gets crummy, the book will still look great. Highly recommended to those still in the 'rat race'.
DILBERT GIVES YOU THE LAUGHS!.......2002-11-22
This is a Dilbert treasury. It only contains comix from the first 13 Dilbert books. Nothing new here.
How they're organized, however, is different. This comic book is split into two sections: Jobs, & Job Impediments.
Here's a list of the Jobs:
-bosses
-budgeting & acoounting
-consulting
-engineers
-entrepreneurs & venture capitalists
-finiancial advisor
-HR
-information services
-interns & co-ops
-ISO 9000 & 14000
-lawyers
-marketing
-procurement
-programmers
-project management
-quality assurance
-retail & service jobs
-safety
-sales
-secretaries
-security
-strategy & planning
-tech support
-technical writing
-temps & contract employees
-training
That covers just about everything but janitor
Now for the job impediments:
-annoying co-workers
-business language
-cubicles
-gender relations
-incentives
-meeting or presentations
-mergers
-performance reviews
-policies
-reorginizations
-teamwork
-telecommuting
-travel
(if you haven't noticed, they're in alphabetical order)
Now, even though I'm not an office worker, I have a good idea of what to do with this book. First, you have to keep it somewhere safe. If you don't, it can get stolen & kinda defeat the purpose. When someone with one of these jobs annoys you, come to your book. Read a few pages about his/her job. Next time you see them,you can laugh at them cruelly/really hard at them for reasons otherwise unknown.Of course, if someone has done this at anytime to YOU, well, now you know.
You must get this book. Buy it. Now. No, really. Now.
Don't Point That At Me.......2002-11-14
Normally, most comic strip books are compilations of the strips for a specific period of time. And Dilbert certainly has several of those. But this time around, Scott Adams has created a decade long compilation.
Instead of presenting the strips in chronological order, which is normally the way it's done, Scott Adams has broken this book into 39 categories contained in two sections. Some of the categories include "Bosses," "Safety," "Lawyers," and "Marketing" to just name a few. And each category contains daily and/or Sunday strips from 1990 - 1999 that pertain to the category.
In addition to the way the book is broken down, it is interesting to see the strip from different years. It wasn't until about 1995 that the characters in the strip evolved into what we see today. Before that, Dilbert had a much longer face, Alice did not have the poofy hair, and the pointy-haired boss wasn't quite so pointy-haired.
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Give My Head Peace: The Hole in the Wall Gang
Tim McGarry
Manufacturer: Blackstaff Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General
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ASIN: 0856406694 |
Book Description
Since the birth of the atomic behemoth Godzilla over 50 years ago, Japan-and the world-has been under constant attack from giant fire-breathing, city-stomping creatures like Gamera, Gappa, Gidorah, Battra, and Mothra.
Written by cult director Jorg Buttgereit (Nekromantik) and an international team of monster experts, this book is a loving homage to Japanese monster movies, their creators, their stars, and their fans.
Monster Island contains plenty of in-depth film reviews, rare illustrations, and exclusive interviews with filmmakers, special effects wizards, monster-suit makers, and actors, as well as informed chapters on the changing face of Japanese monsters, TV spinoffs, and fondly remembered shows like Ultraman and Jonny Sokko and his Flying Robot.
Not to be missed!
Book Description
The songs in this award-winning musical are particularly notable because their pointilistic composition captures in music the painting style of Serault, on whose life this play is based. This is classic stage music, especially the stirring ballad, Move On. Other titles are: Sunday * Finishing the Hat * Beautiful * Children and Art.
Customer Reviews:
Some of Sondheim's most complex Music........2004-09-19
This vocal selection is a wonderful companion to those who love this show. Be warned: the piano acompniment is for advanced pianists only. It is quite beautiful, and the lyrics are some of Sondheim's cleverest. The vocal parts are as always difficult, but people familar with his works should expect nothing less. The music's complexity is what really sets it apart from other shows.
The titles include; SUNDAY, FINISHING THE HAT, BEAUTIFUL, CHILDREN AND ART, and MOVE ON. These are some good ideas for a selection, but when every song is a gem , it must have been hard to choose.
To Sunday lovers, this is priceless. To pianist searching for new, challenging material, look no further.
Sondheim has a stroke of genius.......2003-04-22
The lyrics and musical score of Sondheim is pure elegance. His decadent style reaches a creative "stroke" of shear brilliance. To put it simply this peice of music encompasses the time , the mood, and the mindset of Sondheim.
One of the Best for Auditioners!.......2000-05-13
I, myself being a person who thuroughly enjoys Sondheim, completely enjoyed singing some of these songs. Though I was never in the show, the songs have a deep meaning for me. Some of the songs are perfect for auditions, and I personally use "Move On" sometimes as my balad. It is an excellent compliment to an amazing show.
Book Description
Consisting of black and white pebbles and a grid-work playing board, the ancient Asian game of go appears much simpler than chess, but it continues to stump the most sophisticated supercomputers. Teach Yourself Go explains the rules of the game and, using step-by-step illustrations, helps you acquire a solid understanding of how go is played. You also learn about the origins of the game, its long history, and the body of legend, rituals, art, and literature that it has inspired.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent.......2007-01-25
Concise, understandable, and loaded with information. Includes a complete game, with commentary explaining the reasoning behind the moves. I expect I will be referring back to this book regularly.
Great book - but is it the right one for you? (4,5 stars).......2006-12-15
Teach yourself Go is a nice little book that will teach you a lot with its 200 pages. I knew some Go before I started reading this book, and I think that a complete beginner may find Janice Kim's books (Learn to play Go) a bit easier to learn from. With that said, this book is still a great book to start with even if you don't know anything about Go. It's just a bit harder to read, but it also contains twice as much information as the books Janice Kim writes. Teach yourself Go covers all you need to know about Go, from rules to simple strategy, and a bit more. I felt the book was hard to read, maybe due to the layout, and that the book itself is filled with tons of info. This is a book that takes time to read. Reading isn't everything either, so you have to digest what you read, play Go, and try it all out. If you just rush trough the book, you won't get out all its potential. If you invest some time in the book, you will be rewarded. I find some of the words used in the book to be too advanced. There must be easier words to use. This might not be a problem if your english skills are a bit better than mine, and maybe you really have to use words like this to make a good explanation. Some of the sentences are also a bit awkward. After each chapter you will be met by some Go problems that will check that you understood everything in the chapter. These Go problems can be a bit tough, and some of them are actually quite hard :) On the other side, you might become strong ;)
Very useful .......2006-01-05
A treasured item. It's an easy to read, well structured volume; an invaluable help in moving the reader from novice to the first steps on this life-time journey. It's nicely concise and easy to refer back to. One to keep and recommend.
Clear; easy to follow.......2005-02-19
I found this book very helpful in taking myself from a Go idiot to someone who could at least feel somewhat competent in playing a game.
I found the book well-organized, clear, step-by-step with helpful self-testing problems at the end of each chapter.
One of the better beginning Go books I've looked at
Solid introduction to the basic strategies of Go.......2004-09-25
I have checked out several books from the library on Go, and I found this to be one of the better introductory level books. It's not as instructive to the complete novice as Janice Kim's "Learn to Play Go: Volume 1" (an excellent series btw), but it does cover more material. This book goes over some concepts and then has problems that test you on what you've just read about. It covers a wide range of material from basic moves like nets and ladders up to an example of a complete profesional learning game on a 19X19 board.
Average customer rating:
- Good information, but mixed thoughts...
- outstanding introductory book on go
- Great Book for Complete Beginers
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Go (Teach Yourself)
Charles Matthews
Manufacturer: NTC/Contemporary Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General
| Board Games
| Puzzles & Games
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General
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ASIN: 0844226777 |
Customer Reviews:
Good information, but mixed thoughts..........2002-11-22
At first I really didn't care for this book; even now I feel strangely towards it. However, although I diffinately do not think this is a good intro book (check out the great series by Janice Kim!), I do find that as I have questions arise I can often find answers here. For example, in her second volume Janice Kim talks about different ways of extending or enclosing and refers to certain methods as stronger than others - but my constantly inquiring mind needs to know why and painful detail so that it will seep in! Here Matthews succeeds. He gives several examples of why it is strong and how an attempt to invade can be thwarted. Still, I always open this book with a certain amount of dread. Whereas it does start in a somewhat friendly way and Matthews enthusiasism does seep through, as it progresses it gets a bit dull and dense. It gives me a similar dread to chess books filled with nothing but endless reams of variations. I gave it 4 stars because there is no 3.5 on amazon, and it really does have good information at a very reasonable price. I guess in the end, I agree with another reviewer that this is probably best suited as a "second Go book". It does serve as an informative primer into the depths of Go.
outstanding introductory book on go.......2000-10-18
I've been playing go for many years, and I've read many introductory books on go. This is far and away the best I've seen. It covers a tremendous amount of fundamental material, much of which I haven't seen covered in other beginner's books. It has all the standard material on tactics, cutting, connecting, making living groups, opening strategy, and endgames. The author is a gifted teacher and his love for the game comes through very clearly. The only reservation I have is that some of the material will be quite difficult for absolute beginners. Many times the solution to a problem will be given with a minimum of text explanation; the idea is for you to work out the details for yourself. This is fine for people who have been playing for a while, but may put off beginners. For them I would recommend Iwamoto's "Go for beginners", which covers much of the same material but at a lower level. After that, you'll want to come back to this book. Teach Yourself Go occupies a valuable niche between Iwamoto's book and the more advanced introductions to the game, such as the Kiseido Elementary Go series. I also strongly recommend Yoshinori's four-volume series "Graded Go Problems for Beginners"; after you've read Teach Yourself Go you should definitely work through Yoshinori's books.
Great Book for Complete Beginers.......2000-06-22
This is a wonderful introduction to the game. I am a complete beginner and after reading the rules of the game had many initial questions. This book was able to solve many of them in the first chapter. The book begins with illustrations of the basic rules but does not formally outline them, so reading a simple rule book (like "The Way to Go" by Karl Baker -which is available for free on-line from the American Go Association) is probably a good idea.
Matthews does a excellent job of referencing his examples; each time a play is illustrated any use of a rule is referred to the first detailed explanation of the rule. This is extremely helpful for some of the more complex examples. The problems in the book begin at very basic level and build slowly; in many other books I've seen, even the first problems are above a complete novice.
The organization of this book is also superb. The sections are very short and can be read and understood individually. At the end of the first chapter Matthews outlines several options for proceeding, allowing players to focus their study of the game on the area of greatest interest without becoming lost by skipping chapters.
Book Description
Get a concise, hands-on, and applied approach to project management with the new edition of Core Concepts. The authors take a computer program orientation, focusing on doing Project Management. They organize the book around the project management life cycle, provide you with essential project management concepts, and tie them into the Project Management Body of Knowledge (Project Management Institute runs the PMBOK certification program). This edition includes revised discussion of the integration of parent organization's strategies into project selection and management; and greatly expanded coverage of risk management and assessment in the project management process.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent Reading!.......2007-07-15
This book gave me the information I was seeking. It really was a good read. If you are looking to learn more about Information Technology, this book has it.
Good PM book.......2006-02-26
Easy read, good overview with realistic comments about the job of a PM.
Outstanding Reference and Companion to the PMBOK.......2004-11-14
Using this book as a study guide, it is possible to pass the PMP exam. Using only Project Management in Practice and the PMBOK to study from, I easily passed the PMP exam the first time without joining one of the intensive prep classes. Nearly all the questions on the exam were covered in this book. All the PMI required areas of study are covered; Organization, Planning, Budgeting, Scheduling, Resourcing, Monitoring and Controlling, Evaluating and Terminating. The concepts of Earned Value and Critical Path Method are easily explained and examples given. Formulas and case studies are provided with each chapter. As a practicing Project Management Professional (PMP), I still refer to Project Management in Practice.
Book Description
René Descartes (1596–1650) is one of the towering and central figures in Western philosophy and mathematics. His apothegm “Cogito, ergo sum” marked the birth of the mind-body problem, while his creation of so-called Cartesian coordinates have made our physical and intellectual conquest of physical space possible.
But Descartes had a mysterious and mystical side, as well. Almost certainly a member of the occult brotherhood of the Rosicrucians, he kept a secret notebook, now lost, most of which was written in code. After Descartes’s death, Gottfried Leibniz, inventor of calculus and one of the greatest mathematicians in history, moved to Paris in search of this notebook—and eventually found it in the possession of Claude Clerselier, a friend of Descartes. Leibniz called on Clerselier and was allowed to copy only a couple of pages—which, though written in code, he amazingly deciphered there on the spot. Leibniz’s hastily scribbled notes are all we have today of Descartes’s notebook, which has disappeared.
Why did Descartes keep a secret notebook, and what were its contents? The answers to these questions lead Amir Aczel and the reader on an exciting, swashbuckling journey, and offer a fascinating look at one of the great figures of Western culture.
Customer Reviews:
Aczel's worst.......2007-04-18
I've enjoyed several other Aczel works: Fermat's Last Theorem, God's Equation, Mystery of the Aleph, and I struggled mightily to get through this one, but it's just too dull. Blah, blah, blah, then this clown wrote to that one and said meaningless things; blah, blah, blah, these phrases from this ancient manuscript appeared in this person's letters, proving he was influenced by it. Blech.
Academic Dishonesty.......2006-10-27
It's no surprise that this book wasn't published by an academic press, because no peer review process could possibly have permitted Aczel so completely to misrepresent the contents of Descartes' `secret notebook.' When he purports to be describing the theorem Descartes discovered, Aczel is actually describing work that was done by Euler more than a century later.
One of the `Featured Reviewers' at this site says Aczel "has a talent for explaining mathematical ideas and formulas that might seem daunting to the lay reader." But how can the `lay reader,' including this reviewer, assess how good well he's explaining the material unless he is already familiar with it? Otherwise, an `expert' like Aczel can fabricate his story, the `lay reader' will never be the wiser.
In about 1750 Euler proved that if you count up the number V of vertices of a convex polyhedron, the number E of edges and the number F of faces, then V - E + F is always equal to 2. This is the theorem Aczel attributes to Descartes in the last 2 chapters of his book, a book which is otherwise just a rehash of old biographies of Descartes.
What Descartes actually proved is this: take the same convex polyhedron, calculate the angle deficiency at each vertex and sum these up - the answer is always 8 right angles (720 degrees). What's an angle deficiency? It's the sum of all the plane angles that meet at a given vertex, subtracted from 360. Let's take the octahedron as an example: at each of its vertices, four equilateral triangles meet. So the angle deficiency is [360 - (60 + 60 + 60 + 60)], which is 120 degrees. Since an octahedron has 6 identical vertices, the sum of the angle deficiencies is 6x120 = 720 degrees, or 8 right angles. The octahedron is only one particular case; this works equally well for any convex solid figure. Try it yourself for a cube, where 8x90 = 720.
Well, these two theorems are certainly very different results, but in the late 1800s, after Descartes notebook was re-discovered, people realized that you could deduce Euler's theorem from Descartes theorem. As a result, in the early 20th century some French chauvinists renamed Euler's formula for Descartes.
There is no evidence that Euler ever saw Descartes notebook, although Aczel fabricates a `fact' to make it seem like he did. There is no evidence that Euler ever visited Hanover.
Now the real facts would make a really good story for a popular math book. A real master of the genre, like William Dunham, Simon Singh or Eli Maor, would explain both Descartes' theorem and Euler's theorem to their audience and then demonstrate the logical equivalence of the two.
Aczel is apparently incapable of doing this, or at least was unwilling to do the real work that it would involve. Instead, he describes Euler's theorem where he claims to be describing Descartes' notebook. Specifically, he claims that Descartes counted the edges of a polyhedron, which he most certainly did not. Euler was the first person ever to consider the edge of a polyhedron as an item of mathematical interest, so that he actually had to coin a Latin word (acies) for it.
As is well documented in other reviews: (1) most of this book is a re-hash of various biographies of Descartes and 90% of it has nothing to do with `secret notebook,' and (2) it is absolutely loaded with factual errors about mathematics and the history of mathematics.
What's much worse is the tiny portion that does cover the notebook itself is an amazingly inaccurate and even dishonest misrepresentation of what Descartes really did. Shame, shame, shame.
It depends on what you are looking for...and it's probably not here.......2006-06-22
When one reads a book titled "Descartes's Secret Notebook," one expects a few things: a) information about Descartes, b) information about the secret notebook. But Aczel does a slipshod job of presenting both to us.
First, information about Descartes. What biographical information we can find within this book we can find on the internet in greater abundance and depth. I see no reason to buy this book if a) there are many points of inaccuracy with regard to facts in this book, b) what can be found here can already be found on the net.
Second, the secret notebook. We expect to see the links between Rosicrucian teachings and Descartes's notebook, but what we find is the links between Descartes' life and Rosicrucian teachings, and that between Leibniz's beliefs and Descartes' notebook. So Aczel does not offer us what he promises when he claims a connection between the notebook and Rosicrucian teachings.
Besides, why should I buy this book when it is a poor summary of a 1987 article by Pierre Costabel? Aczel should be ashamed.
And if the Wikiproduct report at the bottom of this page is true (and evidence suggests that this is so), then Aczel should be as ashamed of his lack of integrity as he should be at his lack of scholarship.
Philosopher Cavalier.......2006-06-05
"Descartes' Secret Notebook" reminds us -- if we need a reminder -- as to how and why politics and religion play such a deterministic role in the history of knowledge. Although I agree with those who say that the book does not deliver on its promise to unveil the deepest and darkest secrets of Descartes' notebook, the fact that a complete copy of his notebook is no longer available to us, or so it would seem, fascinates me.
Perhaps the Inquisition is to blame, or the hostile theological climate of Protestant Holland, or just the geopolitical tumult of the seventeenth century. But chance, fate, or whatever, seemed to conspire against Descartes' true legacy the moment he died. The French Ambassador to Sweden, Pierre Chanut, practically tossed his corpse onto the rubbish heap. And though Queen Cristina of Sweden certainly meant well, she seems to have lost custody of the situation once her famous tutor died.
The fate of Descartes' skull is a case in point. His bodily remains were buried in an obscure graveyard in Stockholm, with no head, only to be shipped hither and yonder in later times. Today his skull is "part of a tasteless museum display about the development of the human skull" at the Museum of Man in Paris.
Sad though this may be, if ever there was a "philosopher cavalier" it was Rene' Descartes. Always fashionably dressed and wearing his sword, he seems to have been very charismatic -- a natural celebrity -- which he became in actual fact after the publication of his "Discourse on the Method." And in spite of all the misfortunes of his bodily remains and the disappearance of his secret notebook he is still the "founder of modern philosophy" as well as the inventor of coordinate geometry. Which is not a bad legacy for a man who tried to hide the true nature of his intellectual activities.
As the book makes clear, the life of Descartes is a lesson to all those who value freedom and knowledge and would be loath to see it disappear. His curiosity may have led him to explore alchemy, Rosicrucianism, Copernican theory, and no telling what else. We simply don't know. All we know is that the quest for knowledge, in the broadest sense, often threatens the very foundations of the existing world order. And this may never change. Once certain doctrines are set in stone by the powers that be: "He that troubleth his own ground shall inherit the wind." Proverbs 11:29 KJV.
It Depends on what you are looking for....Great Basic History of Descarte.......2006-05-18
I'm a Mechanical Engineer with enough Mathematics and Philosophy study in my past to have a basic understanding of Descartes. I went into the book with no knowledge of Aczel, the secret notebook, or of the details of Descartes life. With that said I found the book to be great. I walked away understanding much more of Descartes' life and studies. I feel the secret notebook was addressed fairly well through out hinting that it existed through Descartes' fear of publishing. We know the secret notebook is lost to time and very little of it is known, so I'm not sure that we can expect the detail that some reviewers are demanding. All in all I liked it. Fine, if you are a mathematics or Descartes scholar you will not learn much here. But for 99.9% of the population, you will learn of a great Mathematician and Philosopher. Thanks Aczel.
Amazon.com
Though her career was brief, the legendary Civil War ironclad the U.S.S. Monitor helped change the face of naval warfare. The Monitor Chronicles tells the story of the "180 feet of iron"--and some of the great battles of the Civil War--through the eyes of one of her seamen, George Geer.
Geer first stepped aboard the Monitor in February 1862, as a newly minted first-class fireman. Like many Northerners, Geer joined the army less out of a desire to preserve the Union--or free the slaves--than to learn a reliable trade. That said, he performed his duties admirably, earning two promotions in under a year. He also proved an admirable correspondent, sending dozens of letters to his beloved wife, Martha, during the ten and a half months the Monitor was afloat. These letters describe in detail what life was like aboard the ironclad--from poor rations to poor ventilation, and from the excitement of battle to the boredom when the ship remained still. In a letter written aboard a rescue vessel, Geer also described the final hours of the ironclad as she sank in stormy seas on December 30, 1862. Combined with dozens of evocative illustrations, Geer's letters provide historians with a fascinating glimpse inside the Monitor. The Monitor Chronicles also contains information on the fate of the ship in the 140 years since she sank and the ongoing campaign to recover her. Essential reading for Civil War buffs. --Sunny Delaney
Book Description
Marking the ongoing efforts to recover the 136-year-old wreck of the USS Monitor, The Mariners' Museum presents a lavishly illustrated commemorative volume of the renowned Civil War ironclad's past and present.
The short, fabled life of the USS Monitor began on January 30, 1862, at Green Point, Brooklyn, New York, and ended on December 31 of that same year, when the legendary Civil War ironclad sank in 230 feet of water off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Serving on the Monitor -- where engines and living space lay completely below the waterline and the iron deck rose a scant eighteen inches above it -- was like no other duty in the U.S. Navy.
The Monitor Chronicles brings shipboard experience to life through the words of Civil War sailor George S. Geer, whose never-before-published letters home to his beloved wife, Martha, faithfully chronicle the events of that dramatic year. Like many men of his station, George Geer had joined Abraham Lincoln's navy less to help save the Union than to earn money and learn a reliable trade, so his accounts are unflinchingly honest -- at times colored by the bravado of a man at war, at others tinged with the pathos of a man in danger and far from home.
When, on the morning of March 9, 1862, the Monitor and the CSS Virginia fought the first battle between ironclad warships, Geer recalled, "I often thought of you and the little darlings when the fight was going on and what should become of you should I be killed....But I should have no more such fears as our ship resisted everything they could fire at her as though they were spit balls." Whether he sweated in the searing heat or simply waited while the Monitor danced a strategic minuet with the enemy, his words confirm and amplify the proud legacy of the vessel whose very existence brought an end to the era of wooden warships.
On January 2, 1863, Geer reported, "I am sorry to have to write you that we have lost the Monitor." He survived, but sixteen men were lost in a raging sea that seemed to have claimed the ship for eternity. But the story told in The Monitor Chronicles doesn't end there. The book captures a piece of living history, as men and machines attempt to recover the wreck even as it begins to succumb to the elements after 136 years on the ocean floor. Because The Mariners' Museum serves as the official repository of the USS Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, readers will be treated to spectacular underwater views of the Monitor, as well as to an unprecedented look at the salvage efforts. Although more than a century has passed since the ship itself sailed into history, The Monitor Chronicles provides not only a fresh, uniquely intimate view of the Monitor's fateful year as the world's first iron warship but also a provocative glimpse of her uncertain future.
Customer Reviews:
An O.K. book.......2003-02-09
The biggest disapointment is that Greer does not write about the most interesting parts of the Monitor's history: the trip down to Hampton roads and the battle with the Virginia. It is about his shipboard life which details his illnesses and money making schemes to augment his pay which was not paid out to him in full causing financial hardship at home. Mostly of interest for its insights into a sailor's life, less so for info on the Monitor. It's a decent book to supplement other info on the Monitor but not the book to get if you get only one.
Almost a Great Book.......2001-02-16
The Mariner's Museum has done a commendable job in putting together such an attractive collection of letters from Monitor sailor George Geer to his wife. Through his eyes, we see a more human perspective on the Civil War and the famous battle between the Monitor and the C.S.S. Virginia than is available through most other sources. However, at times this perspective is altogether too human, as Geer devotes page after page of his letters to more mundane esoterica such as selling merchandise to his fellow crew members. The Mariner's Museum also used the needlessly repetitive and districting format style of putting some of the very same passages from Geer's letters in text, in bold, oversize text, and/or in actual illustrations of Geer's letters -- as a result, the reader constantly finds himself/herself reading duplicate passages. I also felt a little short-changed by the brevity of the discussion on the current state of the Monitor wreck and the plans for its future recovery and conservation. A few more illustrations of the wreck itself, and a few less of Geer's letters, would have been welcome. Other than these quibbles, it was a very enjoyable and informative look at a revolutionary ship through the eyes of someone who was there when history was made at Hampton Roads.
Great Book.......2000-07-24
An interesting information source for life aboard the Monitor. There aren't alot of books out there about the ship, and I think this book was very interesting and needed. Also George Geer's actual letters are very interesting to read, as he tells everything that happened aboard the ship.
Customer Reviews:
Enlightening readers on the international environment's likelihood to produce another great war due to its flailing status.......2006-05-05
The Age Of War: The United States Confronts The World by Gabriel Kolko (Research Professor Emeritus, York University, Toronto, Canada) is an informed and comprehensive study of what may potentially occur in Professor Kolko's prediction of the world's current state and instability. Enlightening readers on the international environment's likelihood to produce another great war due to its flailing status, The Age Of War describes the American ideals and irrational pursuit of control of the world through a contemporary expression of a kind of "manifest destiny" mentality. A impeccably researched and well authored historical documented and predictive study, The Age Of War is very strongly recommended reading for all young Americans registered for the draft, scholars of American politics and contemporary social issues, modern political science, and those searching for a conceptual interpretation of America's coming potential future on the international scene.
KOLKO: A Randolph Bourne for Our Age.......2006-04-18
The seminal debate over America's entry into World War I was between John Dewey and his one-time student Randolph Bourne. Debate may be too strong a word as Dewey never responded to Bourne's eloquent jeremiad against his embracement of "the war technique" as the preferred route to democratizing the world. Bourne died, aged 32, as the Great War was ending, but his spirit lived and lives on.
Dewey's spirit lives on as well (even if he ultimately accepted that Bourne was right), most recently under the banner of "Humanitarian Intervention," a banner that has probably seen numerous defections based on the report card of their latest Noble Cause, Iraq.
But they'll be back. The peculiar romance of American Liberalism with military adventures: Korea and Vietnam, to name the most important, must account for some of its intellectual and moral paralysis in the face of Bush the 2nd's Middle East disaster.
It's the Bournian spirit that pervades the vast body of work of Gabriel Kolko and his wife, Joyce Kolko. Like Bourne, Kolko is an "irreconcilable" to the self-satisfied, optimistic chauvenism that has led this country into more wars since 1945 than any other.
His first published writings appeared over 50 years ago. They have embraced a staggering range of topics, and displayed great depth of scholarship and an intellectually uncompromising effort to understand who we are and what we have done to others.
Kolko is a self-professed, but non-Marxist, man-of-the-left. Yet the American Left has produced few balanced, as opposed to sectrian, critiques of its rather meager achievements to match Kolko's. See, for example, his 1966 essay, The Decline of American Radicalism.
Many of Kolko's insights into the workings of American history have been adopted by historians without attribution. I don't think this is conscious plagiarism, but speaks to something of a bad-conscience regarding Kolko within the domestic historical profession.
In his massively researched book on the Vietnam War, Choosing War (1999), to mention one example, Fredrik Logevall informs us that "Historians have been slower than political scientists in exploring the concept" of "credibility," as a causal agent in the American military escalation, citing "political scientists" who "got" the saliency of the concept before "historians" did, citing, in the former category, works published no earlier than 1976. Kolko treats "credibility" as a cental motive for the escalation no later than his 1972 essay in Vol V of the Gravel edition of the Pentagon Papers.
American historians are, understandably, a largely patriotic group, and Kolko is, well, just too intellectually uncompromising, skewering America's complacent optimism in refrains that would have pleased H.L. Mencken.
But Kolko's skewering does not share the jaded and joyous elitism of Mencken but rather the belief that "American intellectuals," as Bourne put it in "War and the Intellectuals," "seem to have forgotten that the real enemy is War..."
Like Bourne, Kolko is, in Russell Jacoby's sense of the term in his book The Last Intellectuals, a Public Intellectual. Kolko is not mentioned in Jacoby's book, although despite the density, depth and originality of Kolko's work, he has always written a readable Plain Style, pitched to educated, public-spirited Americans, not academic specialists.
But perhaps Kolko isn't commonly viewed as an essentially public intellectual because he seldom seeks the public eye: he avoids the polemical combat that becomes "the talk of the town", I've never seen him on TV, never heard him on radio, never seen a book review by him, etc. I've seen just one picture of him: on the back-flap of his 1968 book, The Politics of War.
The Age of War is a short book, a summing up of American foreign policy since the Korean War, but especially since 9/11. Those of have read most of his work will not find surprises. The volume's larger themes are The Limits of Power (the title of his 1972 book, co-authored with Joyce Kolko), and the limitlessness of the illusory and disasterous belief in military power within the foreign policy elite, whether neo-con, liberal or conservative.
Worth watching, in terms of the trends Kolko predicts in The Age of War, is the terminal decay of the Western Alliance, and whether the result will be as positive as he believes it will be. As usual, Kolko's perspective on this issue is unconventional.
As an avid reader of Kolko since 1969, my hope is that he will again explore new intellectual territories -- his most exciting writings for this reader are those where he's obviously exploring what is to him new territory.
P.S. I commend the previous reviewer, Mr. Williams, for giving Kolko 4 and a half stars, but he misstates virtually all of Kolko's ideas, and spins his own crack-pot conspiracies as a better alternative. It wasn't Weaver in 1988 who discovered Kolko for conservatives, but Ayn Rand in the mid-1960's. Read Kolko.
The Age of Corporate Statism.......2006-04-15
Many conservatives, neoconservatives, libertarians, and free market advocates probably first heard of Gabriel Kolko when reading ex-neoconservative and free enterprise author Paul H. Weaver's "The Suicidal Corporation" (1988). In Weaver's memoir of his employment at Ford Motors Corporation as Economic Communications Planning Director (written after his discovery that corporations are hostile to free enterprise), he wrote "Aside from their socialism and anticapitalist animus, which I found as alien as ever, the strictly historical conclusions of the New Left historians now struck me as persuasive and even revelatory" (Weaver, p102). The New Left historians that Weaver was referring to were William Appleman Williams, Gabriel Kolko, and others who were busy during the 1960s revising interpretations of American history based upon the historical examination of elite behavior. Kolko's thesis in his PhD dissertation, which was later published in 1965 as a study of railroad regulation ("Railroads and Regulation 1877-1916"), was that corporations favored government regulation because they feared competition and preferred Italian-style corporatism over free enterprise. During the 1960s, Kolko's ideological assumptions were considered radical and his conclusions were generally rejected by other scholars. Since then, Kolko has turned his historical eye from the history of U.S. business to the history of U.S. foreign policy and war.
In his six-chaptered "The Age of War", Kolko examines the effects on Americans generally and on the country as a whole since the British were able to partner with the U.S. to provide the brawn to British empire during and since World War II (see Nicolas John Cull's "Selling War" on how Churchill and his British fifth column accomplished this partnership) - a partnership that Kolko fails to discern. The result of Anglo-American global empire (where the Anglo piece to the equation remains obscure to Kolko) has been "a basic neglect of human necessities and an increasingly decaying public infrastructure of roads, bridges, and much else that people require for their health and welfare" (p2). Kolko views these changes as "an aspect of U.S. foreign policy frustrations and failures" since 1941 (p2).
Chapter one is subtitled "Warfare at an Impasse: The Road to Vietnam". Here Kolko argues that contrary to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's complaint that there were no Vietnam experts, the Vietnam experts who were churning out reports from thirteen intelligence services were ignored. Kolko says that ignoring intelligence is not something that U.S. government leaders began in 2001 - they have always sought the politically expedient and let future leaders worry about the blowback and fallout.
Chapter two is subtitled "Prelude to Permanent Crises: The Background". Kolko states "To the extent the United States was the most active power on the world scene after 1950, wars and conflict since then have increasingly resulted from policies it pursued" (p39). Kolko argues that as British power declined, U.S. power supplanted it. Kolko views the U.S. role in supplanting British power as somewhat predatory rather than a partnership that profited Anglo and American elites alike. He believes that the U.S. is now the sole bully and does not see Blair or other British whispering advice into Bush's ear. Kolko's dismissal of an Anglo-American alliance can be attributed to his view that instead of an Anglo-American alliance calling the shots, especially in the Middle East, there is an Israeli-American alliance doing that. He believes that the Six-Day War and the January 1968 massive arms aid to Israel (over half a billion in 1971 reaching 2 billion in 1973) indicate that U.S. foreign policy is Israeli foreign policy, stating "The difficulties that the United States has experienced in the Middle East began with this decision. Today Israel still receives $2 billion [annually] in free US arms aid" (p45). While it is true that Israel is the number one recipient of U.S. foreign aid dollars, Kolko neglects to inform us that Egypt is number two.
Chapter three is subtitled "The World Comes Apart: The 1990s". This chapter's theme is that the disintegration of the Soviet bloc led Europe from its predictable security to insecurity and regional conflicts. Kolko lambasts government leaders for ignoring U.S., Soviet and British intelligence "most of the time" (p64). He also comments on the Iraqi army invasion of Kuwait on 02 August 1990 and the resulting Gulf War, stating "The administration of George H.W. Bush was utterly surprised; it had no up-to-date maps, desert camouflage netting, and the like"(p65), thereby revealing his ignorance of what really happened. Kolko seems unaware that Kuwait had funded the re-Islamisation of Bosnia and its star city Sarajevo. At the same time, CIA-installed Saddam Hussein was having trouble with internal dissidents and insurgents hoping to topple his regime - an ever-growing problem since the cessation of war with Iran in which both CIA-installed dictators (Hussein and Khomeini) were able to kill off each other's insurgents and maintain stability of their dictatorial regimes under the watchful eye of U.S. AWAC squadrons. The Bush regime decided to kill two birds with one stone - Iraq was instructed to smack up Kuwait and in turn the U.S. would smack up the Iraqi insurgents inducted into the Republican Guard. For 130 consecutive months after the Gulf War, U.S. and/or British bombs continued to fall monthly on the heads of Iraqi insurgents to the benefit of Saddam Hussein's regime. And that's what happened - but Kolko doesn't know this. I wonder why? An over-reliance on published material rather than first-hand participant observation could explain it.
Chapter Four is subtitled "The Twenty-First Century: The United States and War on the World". Here Kolko contends that the U.S. is failing to create a new world order and that Communist China has already eclipsed U.S. power in East Asia - thus showing his lack of any military experience or knowledge of current military installations and operations. Neither does Kolko indicate that he is aware of the Bush Crime Family blowing up the Twin Towers and blaming it on Arabs (see David Ray Griffin's "The New Pearl Harbor" or Webster Griffin Tarpley's "9/ll Synthetic Terror: Made in the USA"); instead Kolko seems to have bought into the government's conspiracy theory that al-CIAdah did it, stating "The war the United States has been fighting abroad since 1947 had finally reached its shores". Many observers do not believe that Arabs did the 9/11 attacks in America or, if they did, they had to have been operated by CIA and/or MOSSAD. Stanley Hilton, for example, has filed a lawsuit against the government on behalf of the families of Twin Tower victims for instructing Marvin Bush to blow them up. As one Muslim educator put it - "you have to be a moron to think that Arabs did it". Kolko does seem to know more about the Taliban than he does about what happened on 9/11, stating the Taliban "were opposed to opium cultivation and reduced it to virtually nothing by 2001" (p110). But Kolko does not appear to know that CIA relies on Afghani opium to fund its covert operations or that the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in order to install former Soviet drug lord Hamid Karzai as leader in the quiet name of CIA drugs. Kolko does indicate that he is aware that dictator general Musharraf in Pakistan and dictator Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan are henchmen for U.S. foreign policy in those two Muslim countries and are opposed by the majorities they dictatorially rule over.
Chapter Five is subtitled "Things Go Wrong: The United States Confronts a Complex World". Here the author maintains that Americans face a dire future if their government continues its Nazi-like behaviour, alleging that "the Iraq War greatly accelerated the breakup of traditional US-led alliances" - thus does Kolko ignore the G-8, United Nations Security Council, or the counsel of Ned Beatty's character Arthur Jensen in the 1976 film "Network" that "There's no such thing as countries anymore; the world is a college of corporations". The G-8 led billionaire club (its enrollment up to 796 in 2006 from 500 in 2000) is still calling the shots as usual. The power of information warfare will ensure that people will not remember longer than six months and will believe what ever the corporate media tells them. Catastrophic lies will be rewritten. But Kolko sees none of this, believing that all that the U.S. does, especially in Iraq, is folly. Kolko does not seem to grasp the fact that every country in the world today is ruled by a leader put there by the CIA or allowed to remain there by its blessing. There is no government anywhere today that is independent of the global billionaire club's CIA, NSA, or others in its alphabet soup of government agencies.
Chapter six is subtitled "Conclusion: The Age of Perpetual Conflict". Kolko sees an aggressive interventionist foreign policy spawning blowback and regional insurgencies without end. I, too, see nothing getting better during the twenty-first century; it will remain the century of corporate statism. As Thomas Jefferson, one of the United State's liberty-loving founding fathers, said - "Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all peoples, entangling alliances with none" is the only foreign policy that is compatible with traditional American values and liberty. That is the tradition of America's years before the British snookered the Yanks into doing British empire (or before the Israelis snookered the Yanks according to Kolko). Kolko is correct on his main point - expensive and clumsy military approaches to foreign policy always seem to end in disaster for the common man and have made America and the world less safe for Americans and less safe for the victims of their government's military adventurism. At the same time, war is the health of the state. Liberty versus power - which will triumph?
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Arab Studies Quarterly (ASQ), published by Thomson Gale on January 1, 2007. The length of the article is 3789 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: Nir Rosen. In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq.(Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq)(Insurgent Iraq: Al Zarqawi and the New Generation)(The Age of War: The United States Confronts the World)(Book review)
Author: Arun K. Gupta
Publication:
Arab Studies Quarterly (ASQ) (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 29
Issue: 1
Page: 79(8)
Article Type: Book review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
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