Pricing the Priceless: Art, Artists and Economics

Customer Reviews:

An invaluable text in the field of the economics of art........1999-01-31

This book explores the reality of the art market. It is written clearly and, as it uses basic concepts and historical examples, it can be read by one without a background in art or economics. Professor Grampp presents a wide variety of questions and sound discussion regarding these questions. This book would be of interest to anyone associated with art from the creator, to the dealer, to the museum director. Economists interested in this topic would also find it wonderful.

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Bunny Yeager Photography

A diverse display of both nudes and semiclothed women

Bunny Yeager's Pin-Up Girls Of The 1950s

Manufacturer: Schiffer Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Photography | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
Portraits | Photography | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
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Bunny Yeager's Bikini Girls of the 1950s

Bunny Yeager's Pin Up Girls of the 1960s

Bikini Girls of the 1960s

The Bare Truth: Stars of Burlesque From the '40s and '50s

The Best of Gil Elvgren

ASIN: 0764314734

Book Description

Before Bunny Yeager was old enough to be one, she fantasized about becoming a Pin-Up girl. She realized her dream and much more. After building a successful modeling career, she moved behind the camera, in the 1950s, to become one of the most renowned glamour photographers in the world. Her work has appeared in magazines, calendars, posters, and several books. This book is a celebration of all the emancipated young women with beautiful faces and figures who posed for her in the 1950s, just as she embarked on her career as a professional photographer. There are nearly 200 photographs, all reproduced as Bunny took them, including full color and beautiful black and white works. This book will delight aficionados of the Pin-Up, historians of photography, and admirers of the human form.

Customer Reviews:

Bunny Yeager Photography.......2007-01-11

Outstanding book of photographs, but remember, this is a nostalgic 50s-60s, photographic adventure. Bunny never gets old, but you do!!!

A diverse display of both nudes and semiclothed women.......2002-08-06

Bunny Yeager's Pinup Girls Of The 1950s tells of a woman who became one of the renowned glamour photographers of the world. This gathers her images and surveys her career and life in the process, with nearly 200 photos by Yeager including color and black and white shots. A diverse display of both nudes and semiclothed women which includes some unusual model types.

Book Description

A witty and erudite collection of human folly, foible and acts of stupidity.
Illustrated with many unusual and quirky images.
Featured in a recent New York Times article.

"An illustrated hodgepodge of ruminations, anecdotes, aphorisms, and esoterica, the book attacks its subject obliquely, spinning a theory of stupidity while cataloging its sightings."-New York Times

"[A] weirdly wonderful compilation . . ."-The Observer

Matthijs van Boxsel believes that no one is intelligent enough to understand the depths of their own stupidity. In The Encyclopædia of Stupidity, he shows how stupidity is manifested in all areas, in everyone, at all times.

In short sections with titles such as "The Blunderclub," "Fools in Hell," "Genealogy of Idiots," and "The Aesthetics of the Empty Gesture," illustrated with many unusual and comical images, stupidity is analyzed within many aspects of culture, including fairy-tales, cartoons, triumphal arches, garden architecture, baroque ceilings, jokes, flimsy excuses, and science fiction. The author reviews mythic fools such as Cyclops and King Midas, cities such as Gotham, archetypes such as the dumb blonde and traditionally stupid animals, notably the goose, the donkey and the headless chicken. The author does more than assemble a menagerie of blunders, however, for he also fathoms the logic of this looking-glass world, examining the boundaries of comprehension and asking where intelligence begins and ends.

In this witty and erudite book, van Boxsel argues that stupidity is a prerequisite for intelligence, that mistakes stimulate progress and that failure is the basis for success. Along the way, he shows how our culture is the result of a series of failed attempts to understand our own stupidity. Stupidity, he claims, is the foundation of our civilization.

Matthijs van Boxsel has been researching, writing and lecturing on stupidity for more than 20 years. He lives in Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

Customer Reviews:

Stupid is as Stupid does.......2003-07-10

I heard about this book a few years ago from some friends in Amsterdam who read it in the original Dutch and couldn't stop talking about it. Now I finally understand what they were laughing about.

I first realized I was interested in the nature of stupidity after reading a few editions of the Darwin Awards, the silly Internet mailings that detailed the adventures of people who died in stupid ways, or, as the creators of the awards put it, "improve our gene pool ... by removing themselves from it." But while The Encyclopedia of Stupidity honors that style (it even includes a brief discussion of the Darwin Awards), it goes beyond that.

In sum: if it's not impossible to be clever about stupidity, then that's exactly what author Matthijs van Boxsel manages to do.

On the most obvious level, this substantial volume is a simple collection of trivia, anecdotes, and ruminations. But as you read through example after example drawn from everything between myth and history to popular culture and dark humor, it becomes clear that there is a sort of "theory of stupidity" that binds the whole thing together.

Mr. van Boxsel at one point frames stupidity as "unwitting self-destruction, the ability to act against one's best wishes." In other words, the book seems to be telling us, the trait the book disects is not a lack of intelligence but a very human kind of flawed or mistaken intelligence, the darkness that makes the light true intelligence visible.

The book is more funny than serious, though there are bits of both styles on its pages. And like any encyclopedia, it is more fun to just open up to a random page and read what is there than it is to read from cover to cover. Enjoy.

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Encyclopedia of Stupidity
Matthijs Van Boxsel
Manufacturer: REAKTION BOOKS LTD
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000N777VU

Book Description

Updated to include new apologies: “[A] densely packed grab bag…an invaluable history lesson, reassuring in its lest-we-forgetness, riveting in its revelations.”—Entertainment Weekly

With an additional 200 mind-boggling miscues and mealy-mouthed mea culpas, My Bad celebrates the best of this year’s most exquisitely squirm-inducing pleas for forgiveness, from a variety of famous flubbers—Donald Rumsfield to Don Imus, Mel Gibson to Michael Richards—that proves public apologies are as American as pleading the Fifth.

Book Description

Virtual Voyages illuminates the pivotal role of travelogues within the history of cinema. The travelogue dominated the early cinema period from 1895 to 1905, was central to the consolidation of documentary in the 1910s and 1920s, proliferated in the postwar era of 16mm distribution, and today continues to flourish in IMAX theaters and a host of non-theatrical venues. It is not only the first chapter in the history of documentary but also a key element of ethnographic film, home movies, and fiction films. In this collection, leading film scholars trace the intersection of technology and ideology in representations of travel across a wide variety of cinematic forms. In so doing, they demonstrate how attention to the role of travel imagery in film blurs distinctions between genres and heightens awareness of cinema as a technology for moving through space and time, of cinema itself as a mode of travel.

Some contributors take a broad view of travelogues by examining the colonial and imperial perspectives embodied in early travel films, the sensation of movement that those films evoked, and the role of live presentations such as lectures in our understanding of travelogues. Other essays are focused on specific films, figures, and technologies, including early travelogues encouraging Americans to move to the West; the making and reception of the documentary Grass (1925), shot on location in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran; the role of travel imagery in 1930s Hollywood cinema; the late-twentieth-century 16mm illustrated-lecture industry; and the panoramic possibilities presented by IMAX technologies. Together the essays provide a nuanced appreciation of how, through their representations of travel, filmmakers actively produce the worlds they depict.

Contributors. Rick Altman, Paula Amad, Dana Benelli, Peter J. Bloom, Alison Griffiths, Tom Gunning, Hamid Naficy, Jennifer Lynn Peterson, Lauren Rabinovitz, Jeffrey Ruoff, Alexandra Schneider, Amy J. Staples

Book Description

Gamelan is the first study of the music of Java and the development of the gamelan to take into account extensive historical sources and contemporary cultural theory and criticism. An ensemble dominated by bronze percussion instruments that dates back to the twelfth century in Java, the gamelan as a musical organization and a genre of performance reflects a cultural heritage that is the product of centuries of interaction between Hindu, Islamic, European, Chinese, and Malay cultural forces.

Drawing on sources ranging from a twelfth-century royal poem to the writing of a twentieth-century nationalist, Sumarsam shows how the Indian-inspired contexts and ideology of the Javanese performing arts were first adjusted to the Sufi tradition and later shaped by European performance styles in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He then turns to accounts of gamelan theory and practice from the colonial and postcolonial periods. Finally, he presents his own theory of gamelan, stressing the relationship between purely vocal melodies and classical gamelan composition.

Gamelan: Cultural Interaction and Musical Development in Central Java. (book reviews): An article from: Journal of Contemporary Asia

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Gamelan: Cultural Interaction and Musical Development in Central Java. (book reviews): An article from: Journal of Contemporary Asia
David Goldsworthy
Manufacturer: Journal of Contemporary Asia Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B00097O8WK
Release Date: 2005-07-28

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Journal of Contemporary Asia, published by Journal of Contemporary Asia Publishers on March 1, 1997. The length of the article is 1320 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: Gamelan: Cultural Interaction and Musical Development in Central Java. (book reviews)
Author: David Goldsworthy
Publication: Journal of Contemporary Asia (Refereed)
Date: March 1, 1997
Publisher: Journal of Contemporary Asia Publishers
Volume: v27 Issue: n1 Page: p130(3)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

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Phenomenal Chess Book!

A personal experience

Fischer/Spassky: The New York Times Report on the Chess Match of the Century
Richard Roberts , Francis Wyndham , C. H. Alexander , Bobby Fischer , and Boris Vasilyevich Spassky
Manufacturer: Times Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Puzzles & Games | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
General | Sports | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0812903021

Customer Reviews:

Phenomenal Chess Book!.......2001-06-24

This book was great. The author does a great job talking about the FIDE in the first half of the book, just to inform you about the technicalities of playing in a World Championship match. The author talks about "The War of Nerves" theory, the somewhate eccentric Bobby Fischer, but at the same time, the outstanding play of him also. Part two of the book is absolutely great. It is a game-by-game analysis, showing other possible moves, a full rundown of the game, move by move, and what I enjoyed, the final position of the pieces. That truely gives you a chance to "get inside" the mind of these great chess players. If you are interested in chess, or want to get interested in chess, read this book!

A personal experience.......2000-05-03

This book was written by a panel of experts and afficianados -- ranging from music and news editors to chess grandmasters. It follows the most highly publicized chess match ever played. Expert analysis of each game is combined with personal and historical context.

The title of my review refers to the fact that I was in Iceland with my father (Richard J Roberts) and the others as we watched the matches, and was somewhat privy to much of the the behind-the-scenes reporting (as privy as a 10 year old could be).

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Fischer Spassky The New York Times Report on the Chess Match of the Century
Richard; with Schonberg, Harold, C.; Horowitz, Al; and Reshevsky, Samuel Roberts
Manufacturer: Bantam
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000NPM74E

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Fischer Spassky: The New York Times Report on the Chess Match of the Century
Richard with H. C. Schonberg, Al Horowitz and Samuel Reshevsky Roberts
Manufacturer: Bantam
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000IQ559W

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Fischer/Spassky-the New York Times Report on the Chess Match of the Century

Manufacturer: Quadrangle, New York
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000I9CHZO

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Fischer/Spassky: The New York Times Report on the Chess Match of the Century
Richard with Harold C. Schonberg, Al Horowitz & Samuel Reshevsky Roberts
Manufacturer: Bantam
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000L2LTSE

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Fischer/Spassky: the New York times report on the chess match of the century,
Richard Jerome Roberts Harold C. Schonberg Al Horowitz Samuel Reshevsky
Manufacturer: Bantam Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000U20OBI

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Fischer/Spassky: The New York Times Report on The Chess Match of the Century.
Richard; Schonberg, Harold C.; Horowitz, Al and Samuel Reshevsky. Roberts
Manufacturer: Quadrangle Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000NGWXOM

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Fischer / Spassky : The New York Times Report on the Chess Match of the Century
Richard Roberts w/ Harold C. Schonberg
Manufacturer: Bantam Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000S6QV90

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Fischer/Spassky: the New York times report on the chess match of the century, by Richard Roberts, with Harold C. Schonberg, Al Horowitz, and Samuel Reshevsky
Richard (1928-) Roberts
Manufacturer: [New York] Quadrangle Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000VZLJY0

Book Description

It takes a special set of trading skills to thrive in today's intensely volatile markets, where point swings of plus or minus 200 points can occur on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis. The Volatility Course arms stock and options traders with those skills. George Fontanills and Tom Gentile provide readers with a deeper understanding of market volatility and the forces that drive it. They develop a comprehensive road map detailing how to identify its ups and downs. And they describe proven strategies and tools for quantifying volatility and confidently developing plans tailored to virtually any given market condition. The companion workbook provides step-by-step exercises to help you master the strategies outlined in The Volatility Course before putting them into action in the markets.

Customer Reviews:

Great book.......2007-02-14

If you have done the optionetics course or read the Options Course then you will love this book. It only covers a few chapters on Volatility, which I would have liked there to be more, however, there were a number of chapters on practical ways to trade it. I particularly liked some of the indicators to trade volatility such as bollinger bands and ATR. Overall a good read and a clear, understandable approach to help improve you as an options trader. Its probably worth a second read, as its full of a lot of great information.

Basic review.......2006-02-27

The book was too basic and gives novices enough information to hurt themselves in the real market.

Perfect Compliment.......2005-11-23

This book is the perfect compliment to The Volatility Course by George Fontanills. It uses real case studies and guides you through step-by-step just like the main book. It tests your knowledge learned from the main coursebook. As with any new subject, learning options takes time and this book really helps the time you spend feel more productive.

fantastic.......2005-11-23

This was a fantastic book and gave me much needed insight into the world of volatility. Thanks!

A Must Book for the Beginning Options Trader.......2004-06-27

As someone who has been trading options for a couple of years, mainly has a hedge against adverse price moves in stocks, I wanted to try my hand at a more aggressive strategy, using options to make money, and possibly become wealthy. I knew that a thorough understanding of volatility was necessary for options trading. I was drawn to this book because I had previously bought the Options Course from George Fontanills and thoroughly enjoyed it.

The Volatility Course has two themes: Understanding volatility and integrating volatility into your options strategies. There isn't a lot of theory to bog the options trader down but good examples to bring home his points. While I may have wanted to see a little more theory for handling the futures market, the book is excellent and would recommend it for the beginning options trader.

Amazon.com

This first-person account of Alzheimer's ties several powerful stories together. Losing My Mind blends personal history with the fear and pain of developing the disease at the age of 57; it is both a sadly fascinating account of Alzheimer's progression and an attempt for the writer to remember his past before it is gone for good.

While his history is recounted in chronological order, these memories--of his childhood; marriage to his wife, Joyce; their years in writing and politics; his passion for herbs and the growing of a successful business--are interspersed with unrelated musings on everything from his cat's sudden deafness to losing his wallet. Clips from articles on Alzheimer's research are sprinkled around, and statistics like the $174,000 that a patient spends on the disease over a lifetime are sobering. Throughout the book, he clearly speaks of his diagnosis as a "sentence"; the lack of a cure is dwelt on in many sections, and a story about an accidental overdose of his prescriptions is particularly grim.

This is not a book that supplies any "power of positive thinking" messages, but instead shows the daily struggle of a man coming to terms with a terrible disease. Poignant and thoughtful, DeBaggio's life will hold meaning for anyone who has been touched by Alzheimer's. --Jill Lightner

Book Description

"We are foolish, those of us who think we can escape the traps of aging," writes Tom DeBaggio. "I was one of them, dreaming of a perfect and healthy old age....Now, at fifty-eight, I realize the foolishness of my dreams as I watch my brain self-destruct from Alzheimer's." Losing My Mind is DeBaggio's extraordinary account of his early onset Alzheimer's, a disease that "silently hollows the brain" and slowly "gobbles memory and destroys life." But with DeBaggio's curse came an unexpected blessing: the ability to chart the mechanics and musings of his failing mind.

Whether describing the happy days of his youth or lamenting over the burden his disease has placed upon his loved ones, DeBaggio manages to inspire the reader with his ability to function, to think, and ultimately to survive. By turns an autobiography, a medical history, and a book of meditations, Losing My Mind is a testament to the splendor of memory and a triumphant celebration of the human spirit.

Download Description

When Tom DeBaggio turned fifty-seven in 1999, he thought he was about to embark on the relaxing golden years of retirement -- time to spend with his family, his friends, the herb garden he had spent decades cultivating and from which he made a living. Then, one winter day, he mentioned to his doctor during a routine exam that he had been stumbling into forgetfulness, making his work difficult. After that fateful visit, and a subsequent battery of tests over several months, DeBaggio joined the legion of twelve million others afflicted with Alzheimer's disease. But under such a curse, DeBaggio was also given one of the greatest gifts: the ability to chart the ups and downs of his own failing mind. Losing My Mind is an extraordinary first-person account of early onset Alzheimer's -- the form of the disease that ravages younger, more alert minds. DeBaggio started writing on the first day of his diagnosis and has continued despite his slipping grasp on one of life's greatest treasures, memory. In an inspiring and detailed account, DeBaggio paints a vivid picture of the splendor of memory and the pain that comes from its loss.

Customer Reviews:

Very helpful for family and caregivers, albeit frightningly honest.......2007-07-16

Mr. DeBaggio is so wonderful to have shared his experiences with diagnosis, physicians, others reactions, and his own struggle to understand and deal with what is happening to him. This book brought a new enlightenment to me, newly dealing with a family diagnosis. It is so easy to forget the person who is actually fighting with the disease when it affects so many in the family. His true account of what his feelings are throughout the months it took to write the book has given me more compassion for my mom and the ability to be angry at the disease as the culprit for all of the cruel things that are happening to all of us while we watch the progression. Thank you, Mr. DeBaggio, for opening my eyes to my mom's struggles.

An Interesting Read.......2007-05-15

For those interested in this subject this book is an engaging and rewarding read. Some may find DeBaggio's anguish a bit excessive, but to me it was a genuine expression of his emotion, not buffered by what is 'proper'.

A Courageous Work.......2006-04-16

How to describe "Losing My Mind." The author, Thomas DeBaggio wrote it as a person making the lonely journey into the opaque fog of dementia. What courage! Dementia is a disease that knows no boundaries. It is blind to the categories in which we usually place our fellow human beings. It can occur at the age of 55 or 85. It can happen to Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, Asians, Jews, Christians, Muslims, males and females, rich and poor. It has not spared ex-presidents. Dementia did not spare my mother whose tale is told in my own recently published memoir. I recommend "Losing My Mind" to anyone dealing with this terrible disease either by him or herself or in a loved one.

Robert Tell, Author of "DEMENTIA DIARY, A Care Giver's Journal"

Pronounced negativism.......2006-03-30

I agree with a couple of the other reviewers in that it is hard to condemn this book since the author has an incurable disease. However, I find his endless harping on his mental condition and just how black everything is to take away from the other excellent material in the book - quotes from various other sources about the disease and its ramifications.

He implies that this is the worst disease anyone could ever get. I think of Parkinson's (and Michael J. Fox), being paralyzed (and Christopher Reeve), muscular dystrophy and MS - and how all of those worsen over time. I also think about acceptance and taking action as the two people mentioned above have done. The action I see this author taking is to constantly dwell on his own decline. This is not a book I can recommend to others with the same affliction unless you can use it as a springboard to act in a different manner.

Terrifying Insight.......2005-07-07

This book recounts the downward decline of the mental state of an Alzheimer's sufferer. At the age of 57, DeBaggio was a successful businessman who ran a plant nursery out of his home. Some annoying problems recalling scientific details of his plants led him to ask his doctor if there might be something wrong with his brain. He consulted with a neurologist who subjected him to a battery of tests, which all pointed to early onset Alzheimer's. In this book, DeBaggio describes his diagnosis, treatment, and losses of mental acuity. One aspect of Alzheimer's is that memories from childhood return with new vividness, so interwoven in this story are the memoirs of DeBaggio's life, from the meeting of his parents to his birth, childhood, and earlier career as a journalist. Juxtaposed with these details are descriptions of his present mental state, his meetings with doctors and struggles with daily tasks, as well as lengthy informative quotations about Alzheimer's research.

The prose floats from one time period to another, repeating itself often with slight variations. But instead of being tedious, this comes across as being an extremely honest portrayal of a person with failing memory who is struggling to communicate. DeBaggio's life story in itself is fascinating and very well-told. The insights the book provides on what it is like to live with Alzheimer's are most informative and riveting.

Book Description

War Memorials as Political Landscape critiques the social meaning of war memorials and their role in political and historical landscapes. Mayo argues that war memorials not only reflect the political history of a nation, but also that these memorials are mechanisms to symbolize and justify history. He posits that the presence or absence of commemoration for America's wars is largely explained by the war's importance in establishing the nation's symbolic identity as a political state and by the number of those who died in that war.

Customer Reviews:

Expansive and Thorough.......2007-10-12

I recently finished this book and found it a joy to read. Not only is it detailed and extensive in its scope, but the author shares with us his passion for the material. The most important aspect of this book compared to others (and there are far too few discussing memorials) is the fact that he has expanded the definition of a memorial to include not just the stone and bronze equine statues we are familiar with but also private collections, public buildings, streets, parks, restaurants with military themes, and in some cases even whole towns. I never realized how pervasive our wars are in our daily lives, no matter how subconscious.
The author also has a balanced and fair assessment of the wars he covers, neither judging too harshly nor pulling punches. Through this balanced approach we actually see how memorials have affected our opinions of war and vice-versa - the very thing I had hoped to find here.
I highly recommend this book, not just for those interested in memorials, but for anyone who wants a more holistic view of how societies choose to remember war.

War Memorials as Political Landscape: The American Experience and Beyond

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War Memorials as Political Landscape: The American Experience and Beyond
James M. Mayo
Manufacturer: Praeger Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OR7282

Amazon.com

This original and provocative book is certain to raise emotions. Its justification of America's war in Southeast Asia directly contradicts other recent studies, such as Fredrik Logevall's Choosing War and Robert S. McNamara's Argument Without End. Michael Lind, Washington Editor for Harper's magazine, examines the American military response to North Vietnamese aggression; American credibility during the cold war; domestic politics; and constitutional aspects of the conflict. He places the war's center of gravity in American public opinion rather than in the population of South Vietnam or the North Vietnamese army. In doing so, he can be blunt, as when he claims that members of the Western left who made excuses for the North Vietnamese land-reform terror were "apologists for state-sponsored genocide." One of his conclusions is that if the United States is to continue to be the dominant world power, "then American soldiers must learn to swim in quagmires." Viewing America's Southeast Asian adventure in the context of the cold war, Lind regards it not as a crime, betrayal, or tragic error, but as an unavoidable confrontation. Whether you agree with his arguments, Vietnam: The Necessary War intelligently, often vehemently, challenges preconceptions that surround the most controversial military conflict in American history. --John Stevenson

Book Description

What went wrong in Vietnam?

Michael Lind casts new light on one of the most contentious episodes in American history in this controversial bestseller.

In this groundgreaking reinterpretation of America's most disatrous and controversial war, Michael Lind demolishes enduring myths and put the Vietnam War in its proper context -- as part of the global conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States. Lind reveals the deep cultural divisions within the United States that made the Cold War consensus so fragile and explains how and why American public support for the war in Indochina declined. Even more stunning is his provacative argument that the United States failed in Vietnam because the military establishment did not adapt to the demands of what before 1968 had been largely a guerrilla war.

In an era when the United States often finds itself embroiled in prolonged and difficult conflicts in places like Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, and Iraq, Lind offers a sobering cautionary tale to Ameicans of all political viewpoints.

Customer Reviews:

A serious topic makes for a delightful reading.......2007-08-09

Michael Lind has to be either the leading American intellectual alive or, a close competitor for that honor. With this lucid book, I was more than persuaded - indeed swept - into giving credence to Lind's arguments about the importance of the American involvement in Vietnam. Mr Lind draws from many sources in order to bolster his artfully weaved thesis. This book has history, analysis, and even some conjectures that are highly plausible. I am sure this book will become the standard against which similar books will be compared. In case that you are curious, here is Lind's verdict: "The Vietnam War was a just, constitutional and necessary proxy war in the Third World War that was waged by methods that were often counterproductive and sometimes arguably immoral. The war had to be fought in order to preserve the military and diplomatic credibility of the United States in the Cold War, ...."

Ultimately Flawed Analysis.......2007-04-15

Michael Lind's "Vietnam: The Necessary War" argues that the Indochina conflict was a crucial and unavoidable struggle within the larger framework of the Cold War. Central to his thesis, Lind maintains that the proxy-war nature of the Cold War--the small clashes that the two superpowers used to determine their resolve and credibility--often had only symbolic importance (Vietnam) and really no geopolitical significance. Moreover, Lind asserts that the American leadership had only a certain window of opportunity in proxy wars, based directly on public reaction to casualties, to achieve US objectives. Lind places that casualty rate at 15-20,000 lives; after that, he argues, presidential administrations ran the risk of losing domestic support for the overall Cold War struggle.
Examining the significance of Indochina and, with complete support of the Communist-monolith idea, (the belief the Kremlin controlled all Communist nations/revolutionaries) is where Lind's analysis ultimately fails. His chapters take a broad approach in an attempt to rebut what he sees as the accepted liberal/Left dogma that has solidified the historical approach to Vietnam (he does, to a lesser degree, also critique hawkish/conservative approaches, such as the "military was not allowed to win the war by the politicians" argument that other research has already debunked). Each chapter feels more like a collection of short essays that never quite gel. One of the most compelling arguments is his examination of the reasons, regardless of political party alignment, of the South's continued support for military excursions and Greater New England's traditional opposition to war. Even here, however, the analysis seems largely general and somewhat detached from the specificity of the Cold War/Vietnam conflict. In each chapter's section, especially the critiques of domestic/Left opposition to the Vietnam War, Lind seeks to debunk "myths" about Vietnam. Each of these sections could be the basis of an entire research project. Lind, however, feels justified in giving usually one example, and devoting a couple of pages to the (very important) topic.
His assertions in these sections often rely upon "if, then" qualifications, based on similar events in the Korea War or World War II, to justify his points about Vietnam. These absolutist terms, such as the answer to his question about the legitimacy of the Diem regime in South Vietnam can be paraphrased as such: "if the US was justified in supporting Syngman Rhee in South Korea, it was all right to support Ngo Dinh Diem." This approach ignores events intrinsic to Vietnam and the Diem regime.
A final critique (leaving out other ones, such as his arguments about PTSD and the morality of superpowers intervening in civil wars for their global struggle) is the idea of what I call Lind's "death ceiling." His assertion that it was not necessary for the US to win the Vietnam War (it was only a proxy war in an overall global conflict)to prove its resolve and end any myths of Munich appeasement, begs the question: What would happen if the United States would have reached its "death ceiling" in any proxy war (not just Vietnam) and not reached even its limited objectives (how does a nation determine when its credibility has been proven to allies and to enemies)? My answer to this is, based on reading Lind's research, is that there would have been more divisive conflicts such as Vietnam. Lind's overwhelming emphasis on credibility and symbolism, over human lives, draws this conclusion.

Lind Leads Us from the Road to Vietnam to the Road to Iraq.......2007-03-13

Lind's total lack of intellectual honesty produced in this "reinterpretation" of the Vietnam war is breathtaking. David Halberstam was in Vietnam. Where was Lind? David Halberstam interviewed the people who were key decision-makers. Lind debunking Halberstam? Hah!

His arguments ring hollow as he tries without success, not merely to reintrpret or revise the history of the Vietnam War, but to rewrite in the face of facts that do not justify his arguments.

His "reinterpretations" of the War are the same arguments being used today by the same bunch of conservative chickenhawks who talked tough while dodging the draft during Vietnam. Those arguments are being used by Dick Cheney in the same way that Robert McNamara used them. And they have led us into the same type of disaster in Iraq, but with greater danger to our national security than Vietnam ever remotely represented.

Viewing a country as dangerous when it was no threat to U.S. national security, manufacturing pretenses for war based upon unverified and unverified Vietnamese attacks on U.S Naval ships were used to justify the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.

One of the main lessons the Bush Administration learned from the Vietnam War was to manufacture similar pretenses as did the Johnson administration. Thus, the unnecessary Iraq War is justified by the Bush administration's uranium find in Niger, the Iraqi/al-Qaeda connections, and Condi Rice's "mushroom clouds."

The same simplistic thinking that led the U.S into our first lost war, is leading into us into our second.

Lind unconsciously displays the real Vietnam Syndrome in his book.
The real Vietnam Syndrome is not that Americans didn't want to fight anymore after Vietnam. The real Syndrome is that reactionaries like Lind cannot admit that the U.S. lost the war in Vietnam fair and square; that we could only lose unless the war effort was undermined by nefarious elements within the U.S. itself.

Lind's is essentially a paranoid, conspiratorial view of the world. This book amply demonstrates that he learned nothing from the Vietnam experience. Americans cannot lose a war, according to Lind, unless there is a vast conspiracy within our own country to produce defeat (echoes of McCarthyism).

It is certainly legitimate to review and revise history as new facts emerge. None do in this book. It's not history, it's polemic at its worst and most unenlightening. Vietnam, which is now our trading partner, and recently visited by President Bush, was as unnecessary to fight as was invading Iraq to disarm Saddam Hussein of non-existent nuclear weapons.

I'm sure Mr. Lind will write another book someday, about the "necessary war" in Iraq. And I'm sure he will find evidence that it was only because of lack of will and a hidden conspiracy that created what will probably be the second Islamic Republic that an incompetent American administration has created (as did Jimmy Carter in Iran).

This book is a must have for serious historians.......2007-03-03

This book is a must for serious students of history. The author is an learned expert who knows what he's talking about.

Necessary reading on America's role in the world.......2005-12-27

This is a dense but revealing book. It called my attention while searching for a different perspective to the square-minded, whacky, pacifistic analysis.

The auther is, no doubt, a liberal democrat who has engrossed the ranks of the anti-Bush whackos lately. However, he gives us an honest and detailed explanation of the background of Vietnam. He convincingly lets us see the whole picture of what was involved in the decision-making behind Vietnam at the time.

It's certainly about time now -without all the sound and fury of yesterday- to help people get rid of their prejudices (aka ignorance) towards the subject, whether liberal or conservative.

This book is not a military account of the war, though. But it's the absolutely necessary companion -after reading the military facts- for a quiet meditation and re-evaluation.

There are many great arguments in this book that can quench your thirst for wisdom, as in: "These three regions -Vietnam, Korea, Indochina- were not contested because they were important. THEY WERE IMPORTANT BECAUSE THEY WERE CONTESTED."

Most revealing and convincing to me were the quotations from letters by the communists leaders Stalin, Ribbentrop (foreign minister for the nazis) and Mao mocking America's military capabilities and political resolve towards war. These are worth the whole book, and a thousand books. Everyone in America should read pages 44 to 46 before being given the right to vote (or work for the government, for that matter).

Thus dixit Stalin -by the way, thank God there's a hell for guys like him, I wouldn't like to meet him in heaven-:

"They are fighting little Korea, and already people are weeping in the USA. What will happen if they start a large-scale war? Then, perhaps, everyone will weep." Mao's and Ribbentrop's words are of the same caliber. It all comes down to the simple conclusion that America's war in Vietnam was a proxy war, a game of intellects, a poker game with the USSR and China.

Having the choice of playing poker with someone who hates you and would like to see you dead, or dueling with him, I would would pick the first option, if only because I care more about my life than my money.

NB. I can't help remembering my little conversation with this Chinese female teacher and being astounded as to not knowing how to reply. She was emphatically arguing that America had invaded Korea first and that caused China to help their poor Asian "compadres". Nice. Her government and the US had sponsored her to come here and teach. But for this? This is what I call a willing spy. But we have to be so nice and understanding with foreigners, right? Candid, also? Stupid, also? On the other hand, I think, Americans are so different from other peoples. You see, this chinese lady believes everything her government taught her, as a dogma of faith. But Americans don't. On the contrary, if it's the government who says it then it must be a lie.

Another particularity -and I may be digressing too much- is that this welcoming trait (though hypocritical it may be) of Americans towards immigrants is restricted to a certain kind of immigrants. To be brief, teachers, scientists, pseudo-intellectuals are more welcome, overall, than typically poor families from Central/South America. But this is the real human-stuff that America is made of. Remember what Ms Liberty with her torch says? America is welcoming people who hate her and try to show her how bad she is, but is closing doors to her real constituency: the decent fellows who want to work, pay taxes, and die.

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