Customer Reviews:
good for study groups.......2007-09-01
This book was purchased for a study group of teens very good information easy to relate and to get the group engaged in conversation without the embarassment of the subject at hand would hightly recommend
Excellent! This is a HUGE help with talking to kids about sex. .......2006-01-12
If you are struggling with what to say to your children regarding sex issues, this book will be a lifesaver. It also approaches abstinance in a realistic way that I was very impressed by. I also liked the honest dealings with STDs. This is the best book I have found for parents about "kids and sex".
Misleading Title. Check out the book's Table of Contents.......2002-10-01
Without being preachy, the book makes a case for pre-marital abstinance. Discusses the costs/disadvantages of becoming sexually active as a teen, and encourages kids to think for themselves. Also encourages parents to be ready and to make decisions about dating age etc. before the situation comes up. If you are appalled by books that say "abstinance is best, but since you're going to do it anyways..." or "make sure you're ready" (most kids "in love" think they're ready), this book is for you.
Customer Reviews:
A Marginally Useful Collection of Medical Memoirs.......2004-05-24
There seems to be no end to the fascination the Civil War holds for modern Americans. "In hospital and Camp" capitalizes on some of that fascination by printing recollections about medical activities on both sides of the conflict. What results is a moderately interesting, marginally useful little book that will give readers something of the flavor of what it was like to deal with wounded and diseased soldiers in what many historians claim to be the "first modern war."
Straubing has strung together the memoirs of ten doctors, nurses, and medics who served in the war. All were previously published between 1863 and 1911, are readily available in any good university library, and are superior to the extracts published here. Some of the recollections were written by such literary luminaries as Louisa May Alcott, Walt Whitman, and Frederick Law Olmstead and have an elegance not present in most other writings about the war. Others were prepared by physicians who were probably more comfortable with a scalpel than a pen and have a clinical tone about them. The compiler provides a brief, mildly interesting introduction to the subject, short chapter introductions to set the tone for the excerpt, a slim bibliography, and an index.
From my perspective, there are three fundamental reasons for republishing primary source materials as done by Straubing: the sources are generally unavailable to potential users because of age or inaccessibility; they present a new and different perspective on the past; or they can be used to teach the historical method to neophytes. If this collection has a use, it is the last of these, and I can see "In Hospital and Camp" becoming a source for high school and some undergraduate term papers.
Book Description
In this powerful collection by one of today's leading African American intellectuals, Keeping Faith situates the current position of African Americans, tracing the geneology of the "Afro-American Rebellion" from Martin Luther King to the rise of black revolutionary leftists. In Cornel West's hands issues of race and freedom are inextricably tied to questions of philosophy and, above all, to a belief in the power of the human spirit.
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The Atmosphere and Weather of Southern Africa
R.A. Preston-White , and
P.D. Tyson
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0195704967 |
Book Description
Here is a definitive undergraduate textbook on the atmospheric processes affecting weather and climate, with specific reference to conditions in southern Africa.
Book Description
Life at the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette has long captivated readers, drawn by accounts of the intrigues and pageantry that came to such a sudden and unexpected end. Stefan Zweig's Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman is a dramatic account of the guillotine's most famous victim, from the time when as a fourteen-year-old she took Versailles by storm, to her frustrations with her aloof husband, her passionate love affair with the Swedish Count von Fersen, and ultimately to the chaos of the French Revolution and the savagery of the Terror. An impassioned narrative, Zweig's biography focuses on the human emotions of the participants and victims of the French Revolution, making it both an engrossingly compelling read and a sweeping and informative history.
"Certainly no one can arise unmoved from the reading of this powerful work." -- The New Republic
"Excellent biography." -- The New York Times
Customer Reviews:
Stefan Zweig, a truly amazing writer.......2007-01-10
I love all the works of Stefan Zweig; even in translation, you can tell what a brilliant storyteller that Stefan is. In Marie Antoinette, you could almost feel pity for the unfortunate woman that fate so harshly dealt with the responsibility of a queen. The book is excellent in detailing the emotional stages of her life as a young child into womanhood, & all that she had to endure amid all the royal duties, gossips, struggles & fights behind the palace doors. All in all, an execellent book that I enjoy over & over again.
A dated interpretation!.......2006-07-28
As a disciple of Freud, Zweig was fascinated with the new psychoanalysis and applying it to historical characters. I think he overdoes it in his biography of Marie Antoinette, attributing her love of clothes, gambling, and partying to supressed desires rather than youthful vivacity, since she was a teenager, married at fourteen. This is a book that has outlived its time. Unfortunately, Zweig's Freudian interpretation has been imitated by other biographers and gives a false view of Marie Antoinette even to this day.
Was She Average?.......2005-09-14
I think the title should read, "The Portrait of an Average Woman's Behavior". I think one would find it hard to accept that Ms. Antointte was anything but an average woman of her time. Yes, it is true that her behavior was typical of an average woman, but she was raised to become a queen, not your average woman. Finding true love with a warm, romantic, and compassionate man in comparison to her husband Louis XVI and the manner in which she handled the affair are truly average. Her thoughts and behavior as the momentum of the French Revolution accelerated are those of an average woman. Aside from the misnomer, I truly enjoyed the information and the manner in which Mr. Zweig presented it to the reader. Mr. Zweig exposed Ms. Antoniette to the reader as if he had known her personally. After reading this biography I now feel that beneath all the hair pieces and hats, she behaved as any woman would have done in her situation.
Stands the test of time very well........2005-05-23
Dating from 1933 in its first edition, this book is part biography and part psychological analysis of the great Austrian Empress Maria Theresa's daughter who died a hated Queen of France. While both its writing style and its ideas - particularly its author's assumptions about the fundamental nature of womanhood - may seem quaint to the 21st Century reader, it's still very well worth reading. Zweig refuses to rely upon a number of commonly used sources that he has reason to consider suspect, and he approaches his subject with genuine interest that's refreshingly uncontaminated by awe. The Archduchess Antoinette, the Dauphiness of France, the giddy young Queen to Louis XVI, the maturing mother of the Dauphin who would have become Louis XVII - Zweig captures them all, and then takes us with him through this woman's terrible final transformation into the prematurely white-haired "Widow Capet" who mounts the scaffold. He writes her life with frankness that's remarkable, truly, considering the era in which his work was originally published.
The Wicked Austrian Queen.......2003-02-22
Portraying Marie Antoinette as an "average woman," as the title of Zweig's work provocatively suggests, is a debatable proposition. On the one hand, as Zweig shows throughout this study, Marie Antoinette was no prodigy: she was flawed, egotistic, intellectually limited and ... indiscreet. Her greatest passions were for clothes, vast flowery gardens, [fancy] jewelry and good looking Swedish men; she was a compulsive spendthrift; her political self-awareness was zero and her policy meddling was uniformly disastrous. Her indiscipline at court was flagrantly exploited by her political enemies - notably her jealous and ambitious brothers-in-law Louis and Charles (the later Bourbon Restoration kings) - who portrayed her as a modern day Jezebel. In all of these respects, her life was far from "average". But the "ordinariness" within, argues Zweig, left her ill-equipped to deal with the challenges of an extraordinary life.
Once the Revolution happens, however, Zweig's "averageness" argument makes a dog-leg turn. Under the extreme pressures of her imprisonment, her husband's guillotining, her separation from her beloved children and her state trial for treason, she rose above the "average," drawing on her Habsburg dignity and treating her Committee inquisitors with the contempt they deserved. In death, if not in life, she proved herself to be a true daughter of Maria Theresa. Even ordinary people can be martyrs, Zweig seems to be saying.
Zweig is a natural storyteller, and the fact that he, like Marie Antoinette, was Viennese gives him insights into her sensibilities and predilections. Another Viennese voice can be heard in this narrative: the psychological narrative owes much to Dr. Freud - particularly when we come to her early womanhood. Can it be, as Zweig dares to suggest, that Louis XVI's early impotence, and young Marie Antoinette's consequent frustration, fueled her shallow materialism? Was her scandalously profligate lifestyle an outlet for ... frustration? Did one man's "shortcomings" thus cause the revolution? And what of the bizarre Strasbourg ceremony whereby the newlywed Marie Antoinette was forced to [unclothe] at the frontier, lest the new Dauphine of France cross the border wearing foreign clothes? Surely an emotionally scarring experience? Her tale is a gift for the Freudian, and Zweig milks it for all it's worth.
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- Who Won the Cold War on the US side?
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First Call: The Making of the Modern U.S. Military, 1945-1953
Thomas D. Boettcher
Manufacturer: Little Brown & Co (T)
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0316100927 |
Customer Reviews:
Who Won the Cold War on the US side?.......2000-05-30
This book covers the period 1945-53, the years of the Truman Administration and the formation of our modern military/national security sturcture. Thomas D. Boettcher weaves an interesting story going from Truman's White House office to the trenches in Korea where outnumbered GI's fire their last HEAT round at approaching North Korean T-34/85's. Included in this fine history are heroes, such as George C. Marshall, Arleigh Burke, Hoyt Vandenberg, along with my favorite, Matthew Ridgeway, `bad guys' like Louis Johnson, Frank "Rowboat" Matthews and of course Joe McCarthy, as well as epic figures like Douglas MacArthur. The author's handling of Harry Truman is balanced. On page 172 he writes, "Truman's . . . personal attitudes and policies had created a highly charged, polarized enviroment - these attitudes and policies being, in particular, the President's distrust of the career military, his dislike for the Navy . . . and his disposition to keep decreasing already austere military budgets while dramatically increasing the roles of the US military services in world affairs." Needless to say that such policies enjoyed broad bipartisan support prior to the fall of China, after which the Republicans attempted to smear Truman. Republican Anti-Communism, which held the party together for so long, started at that time.
At the end of the book however, Boettcher gives Truman his due. Towards the end of 1952 during peace talks in Korea, the President rejected Communist demands that all UN-held prisoners be mandatorilly repatriated, remembering the fate of the Cossacks at the end of World War II. Allowing the exchange would have been a politically expediant decision, but it wouldn't have been Truman. As the author concludes on page 404, "Still the world is a safer place for Truman having been Commander in Chief. Another leader might have been more likely to use atomic bombs to save the Eighth Army back during that terrible winter of 1950. Truman did not and thereby established the most important precedent of the cold-war era."
What came out most of all from reading this book was the desire among all those described to do right by the country. Sure there was intense interservice rivalry, but there was little hint of the self-serving "cashing in" so evident among both US civilian and military officials today. Truman and Marshall left government service with little capital worth enjoying (by today's standards) modest pensions. Nor did they worry about landing a cushy job in the private sector upon retirement. Gone too is any indication of political vision or stature. Comparing Truman to the current Reaganist candidate (a scarecrow in comparison) is only one more indication of how far America has degerated as a functioning political system answerable to the real needs of her people.
Oh, the answer to my title question? Harry S. Truman of course.
Book Description
From the acclaimed globalization critic, a far-reaching analysis of America's military, economic, and political vulnerabilityThe empire seems unassailable, but the empire is weak-and precisely because of its imperial ambitions. So argues Walden Bello's provocative new book, which systematically dissects the strategic, economic, and political dilemmas confronting America as a consequence of its quest for global domination.An award-winning development expert, Bello shows how despite the enormity of the U.S. defense budget, American forces are already overextended, a condition bound to intensify as each local "victory" breeds simmering resistance and new confrontation. He points to the empire's looming economic breakdown, the result of its gargantuan military costs, record-breaking deficits, and exploitative trade and investment relations with developing countries. On the political front, he warns of the bitter disillusionment mounting around the world in response to America's failure to champion liberal democracy. Everywhere America goes, crony capitalism, hostile coercion, and gross inequalities in income eat away at expectations of justice and inclusion.A clear and prophetic examination, Dilemmas of Domination reveals a not-too-distant future in which the empire's hidden weaknesses will yield fatal challenges to American supremacy.
Customer Reviews:
The weak must hang together, otherwise they hang separately.......2005-11-05
In this stringent view from the South, Walden Bello discerns three different crisis levels beleaguering the US world domination: a military, a judicial and an economical level.
On the military front, the Iraq war shows clearly the limits of interventon: 'today the entire US military is either in Iraq, returning from Iraq or getting ready to go.'
The lesson for the South is that the US military supremacy can be brought to a halt with guerrilla warfare. A sledgehammer is useless in swatting flies.
On the judicial front, the US is loosing its legitimacy.
In Western societies, enhancement of individual freedom and democratic representation are the ideological cornerstones of the regime.
Nationally, recognized human rights (no access to personal information, privacy) are jeopardized in the US by the Patriot Act in the name of the war against terrorism.
For Walden Bello, the US government is becoming authoritarian, because it is in the hands of the military-industrial complex, which functions on a risk-free, cost-plus basis and grabs one half of the US budget. He quotes judiciously William Pfaff: 'The military is already the most powerful institution in the US government, largely unaccountable to the executive branch.'
Internationally, consensus and multilateralism are needed through international institutions.
However, the US behaves unilaterally. Dealings with the South are subordinated to strategic considerations (R. Zoellick: 'countries that seek free trade agreements with the US must cooperate on its foreign policy goals.')
Walden Bello's analysis of the WTO agreements is devastating. He calls them a free trade monopoly in the hands of corporate interests. WTO's agreement on Agriculture is not less than 'Socialism for the Rich'.
The result is that the US democratic messianism is seen as sheer hypocrisy by the rest of the world.
Economically, some of Walden Bello's arguments are a little of the mark.
Finite natural resources and ecological space are demographic problems. The conflict between a minority in command of assets and the majority of the population is a trade union and an election problem.
But some of his arguments are to the point. There is a widening inequality gap in the US: the richest 1% of the population pocketed more than half the benefit of the latest tax reduction. The actual US budget and trade deficits are unsustainable in the long run and certainly if the inflow of foreign capital comes to a halt.
Finally, there is a new hegemon at the horizon: China with its state-assisted capitalism. The author summarizes brilliantly China's behavior: 'nations have no permanent friends, only permanent interests.'
But what should the South do in the meantime: regional economic blocks, G-20, South-South cooperation, because 'the weak must hang together, otherwise they will hang separately'.
Walden Bello's hard hitting analysis of current events should be a vademecum for all politiciams and laymen.
A must read.
In this context, I also recommend the works of Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed and Noreena Hertz.
Free trade as a tool for domination.......2005-10-26
I've read lots of books about globalization and free trade but none exposes the uneven playing field of free trade as good as Walden Bello. He shows that not only the evenness of playing field but also how the way U.S. is imprudently trying to dominate the world by adapting short sighted policies. These kind of policies have become the distinctive mark of recent American ideology domestically and foreign.
Dilemmas indeed.......2005-04-29
The problems of the US mount daily from a ballooning deficit to heightened opposition from multiplying points on the globe. Walden Bello's Dilemmas of Domination is a tour de force dissection of the causes of these mounting problems. He argues from an objective and non-partisan position in the global South. Because he primarily works outside of the US and because his method relies heavily on history, his account is compelling. Dilemmas of Domination contends that the US has entered into a period of decline as the world's hegemon. Three crises characterize the loss of power and prestige. The first crisis is the problem of manufacturing and raw materials overproduction that leads to a decline in profits, and as wages are squeezed to stabilize profits demand falls further. Added to these problems is the fact that the US, the consumer of last resort, cannot continue to borrow and buy forever. The IOUs to the rest of the world will eventually have to be repaid. A second critical problem is military overextension. According to Bello, the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrate the US is not invincible. If it were, how could guerillas continue to move about these occupied nations so freely and make nation-building into such a farce? The US military is so strained that it has to hire mercenaries from companies like Blackwater to protect its corporate interests abroad because a draft would undermine all of its imperial adventures. The third crisis, perhaps the most enduring, is legitimacy. Ideologically, the US has lost its currency to lead the world. Because the US dominates international financial institutions like the IMF, World Bank and most of the regional development banks, their imposition of neo-liberal structural adjustments programs has led to a revolt against their destructive policies as witnessed by the left ferment especially in Latin America but also in the rest of the global South. Furthermore, the US bullying and sometimes insulting treatment of the UN has further sullied the US's reputation. Added to this international delegitimation is the quagmire of domestic politics from the surrender of civil liberties to the patently obvious corporate control of both major parties. For readers looking for a rich and clear formulation of why the US government is detested and feared by much of the earth's population this is the best primer.
Book Description
Austrian naturalist Viktor Schauberger (1885-1958) was far ahead of his time. From his unusually detailed observations of the natural world, he pioneered a completely new understanding of how nature works. He also foresaw, and tried to warn against, the global waste and ecological destruction of our age.
This book describes and explains Schauberger's insights in contemporary, accessible language. His remarkable discoveries—which address issues such as sick water, ailing forests, climate change and, above all, renewable energy—have dramatic implications for how we should work with nature and its resources.
Books:
- Answers: A Parents' Guidebook for Solving Problems
- Arte de respirar, El
- As They Grow: Your Two-Year-Old
- Be Sweet: A Conditional Love Story
- Becoming a Friend & Lover
- Born Dancing: How Intuitive Parents Understand Their Baby's Unspoken Language and Natural Rhythms
- Caring for Someone After a Stroke (What You Really Need to Know About...)
- CCEL Classics CD: works by Saint Augustine, John Calvin, John Donne, Julian of Norwich, Brother Lawrence, Martin Luther, Saint Teresa of Avila, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas a Kempis, John Wesley, and more!
- Celebrating Family: Our Lifelong Bonds With Parents and Siblings
- Chasing Ideas: The Fun of Freeing Your Child's Imagination
Books Index
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- Into the Tiger's Jaw : America's First Black Marine Aviator - The Autobiography of Lt. Gen. Frank E.
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- Disputed Waters: Native Americans and the Great Lakes Fishery
- Recognizing the Intrinsic Value of Animals: Beyond Animal Welfare
Teens Sex and Choices
How to Talk to Your Child About Sex: It's Best to Start Early, but It's Never Too Late -- A Step-by-Step Guide for Parents
The Care & Keeping of You: The Body Book for Girls (American Girl Library)
