Burghley: William Cecil, Lord Burghley (Profiles in Power)

Customer Reviews:

A Concise Regnum Cecilianum.......2000-04-17

Michael A. R. Graves is one of the leading authorities on Elizabethan parliaments, so one might expect his book on the leading Elizabethan statesman to be good. And in many ways it is. Wide-ranging and erudite, in easily-digested short segments concerning various modules of William Cecil's career, 'Burghley' offers an excellent if condensed overview of the achievements of Elizabeth I's chief adviser. Unlike earlier books on the subject, 'Burghley' does not pursue every minute (and often unnecessary) aspect of his career. However, during some sections of the book, Graves' love for the minutiae of politics and economics becomes apparent, although regrettably is not likewise communicated to the reader. The final chapter is therefore extremely welcome and useful, containing a subjective but learned analysis of Burghley the man. The sheer vastness of Burghley's surviving documentation makes the task of his biographer an incredibly daunting one, and in my opinion, Graves has done a commendable job. Although not recommended for the casual reader with a passing interest in Burghley's life, the book is excellently suited to students of Elizabethan politics, for whom it was clearly written. For the purpose of last-minute cramming or essay research, this slim volume is a welcome and detailed alternative to the considerably thicker, more in-depth tomes of Hume, Read, Beckingsale, et al.

The Anonymous Life of William Cecil, Lord Burghley (Studies in British History)

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The Anonymous Life of William Cecil, Lord Burghley (Studies in British History)

Manufacturer: Edwin Mellen Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Irish | Ethnic & National | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

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The great Lord Burghley (William Cecil): A study in Elizabethan statecraft

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The great Lord Burghley (William Cecil): A study in Elizabethan statecraft
Martin Andrew Sharp Hume
Manufacturer: McClure Phillips
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Book Description

With admirable discernement and masterful documentation, this very readable book presents a general view of the policy of the reign of Elizabeth, especially with relation to the influence exerted upon it by her principal minister. ILLUS. with maps.

THIS TITLE IS CITED AND RECOMMENDED BY: Books for College Libraries; Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature; The American Historical Association's Guide to Historical Literature.

Lord Burghley in Shakespeare;: Falstaff, Sly, and others,
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Lord Burghley in Shakespeare;: Falstaff, Sly, and others,
Gerald William Phillips
Manufacturer: T. Butterworth, ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

British | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books | 18th Century | 19th Century | 20th Century | Classics | Contemporary | General | Historical | Humor | Letters & Correspondence | Middle | Old | Poetry | Renaissance | Shakespeare | Short Stories
ASIN: B0006ANNOO

Memoirs Of The Life And Administration Of The Right Honorable William Cecil, Lord Burghley V3
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Memoirs Of The Life And Administration Of The Right Honorable William Cecil, Lord Burghley V3
Edward Nares
Manufacturer: Kessinger Publishing, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1432535323

Book Description

This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world's literature.

Lord Burghley: un gobernante tras bambalinas.(William Cecil, político inglés)(Biografía): An article from: Siempre!

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Lord Burghley: un gobernante tras bambalinas.(William Cecil, político inglés)(Biografía): An article from: Siempre!
Gerardo Laveaga
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B000MTFHWA
Release Date: 2007-01-23

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Siempre!, published by Thomson Gale on September 4, 2005. The length of the article is 726 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: Lord Burghley: un gobernante tras bambalinas.(William Cecil, político inglés)(Biografía)
Author: Gerardo Laveaga
Publication: Siempre! (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 4, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 52 Issue: 2725 Page: 27(1)

Article Type: Biografía

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Burghley; the life of William Cecil, lord Burghley: Biographical notices of his successors the earls and marquises of Exeter, a description of Burghley ... &c., in St. Martin's Church, Stamford Baron

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Burghley; the life of William Cecil, lord Burghley: Biographical notices of his successors the earls and marquises of Exeter, a description of Burghley ... &c., in St. Martin's Church, Stamford Baron
William Henry Charlton
Manufacturer: W. Langley
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Historical monograph: William Cecil, lord Burghley (The historical monograph series)

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Historical monograph: William Cecil, lord Burghley (The historical monograph series)
Augustus Jessopp
Manufacturer: T.C. & E.C. Jack
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Life and times of William Cecil, the great Lord Burghley: Lord treasurer to Queen Elizabeth

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Life and times of William Cecil, the great Lord Burghley: Lord treasurer to Queen Elizabeth
William Henry Charlton
Manufacturer: Whittaker
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B00088C8MC

Lord Burghley's papers in the British Library in London (Politics and administration of Tudor England)

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Lord Burghley's papers in the British Library in London (Politics and administration of Tudor England)
William Cecil Burghley
Manufacturer: Harvester Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0007AN91U

Book Description

A beautiful hardcover book and collector's item, "I Remember Ben Hogan" is an oral history of an amazing golf legend. Many people were touched by Ben Hogan although few were truly able to connect with him. To a select few, he was a shy, sly mentor, able and willing to reveal golf-swing secrets with a grip and a rare grin. Author Mike Towle uncovers more than 100 original stories regarding golf's most famous legend.

Customer Reviews:

Awesome!.......2006-03-14

I have read a lot about Ben Hogan but this was by far and away one of the best books I've read. I will read this again from time to time.

Interesting insights!!.......2002-01-19

It's fascinating to me that a guy as reclusive as Hogan could command so much public adoration and curiosity. This is a book that offers a lot of neat stories about Hogan that I had never read. A bunch of people who knew Hogan, both well-known and not so well known, tell their stories about Hogan in their own words---in oral history form. I've read a couple of other books on the Hawk and those were nice reads in their own way as well. I read the other reviews on this page and don't understand why "clucas" called this a "duck hook." It isn't--it's not John Feinstein-caliber, but it's still worth the price. Sounds like some bitterness being expressed by clucas, probably someone who doesn't know anything what it takes to win at golf or can recognize good book writing.

you'll either love it or hate it..........2001-11-24

there seems no in between. I have 800+ golf books and have read everything just about everything on Hogan. (What club did he REALLY hit at Merion in the famous photo?). Due to the negative reviews I didn't get to this one for a while. When I did, I truly enjoyed it. Is some info repeated? Sure. But this is mostly new, original and genuine investigation, not reguritation. If you are a golf and golf history BUFF I think you will enjoy. If not, pass and read the more current books. (a 2 iron.)

A duck hook.......2001-03-14

While I understand that any author that wants to write about The Hawk will have his work cut out for him, it seems that Towle took the path of least resistance. A couple of phone calls here, 5 minutes of editing there, and you're left with a book that tells you two things:

1.) Hogan was a gruff but soft-on-the-inside guy.

2.) Hogan got the yips later in life.

Those who want to learn more than those two points would be better off avoiding this book.

Terrific book.......2001-01-29

The last two reviewers before me couldn't have read the same book I did. The whole point is that while Hogan is such a legendary figure inspiring tremendous curiosity, information about him has come out in bits and pieces over the years. There were dozens of tidbits in this book that were revelatory to me, and I'm someone who lived in Fort Worth many years while the reclusive Mr. Hogan was still alive. I found this book really good and informative, and full of new material. Based on its oral-history format, and the author's own admission in the introduction, this wasn't supposed to be an earthshaking biography full of dirt. Instead, it offers a lot of nifty snapshots about Hogan from people, a number of whom were his close freinds that, while not celebrities, had insights into Hogan's real life that "celebrities" who thought they knew him didn't. This book is definitely worth at least one read.

In Good Company: The Shooting Script (Newmarket Shooting Script)
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In Good Company: The Shooting Script (Newmarket Shooting Script)
Paul Weitz
Manufacturer: Newmarket Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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The Squid and the Whale: The Shooting Script (Newmarket Shooting Script)

About a Boy: The Shooting Script (Newmarket Shooting Script)

Little Children: The Shooting Script (Newmarket Shooting Scripts Series)

Little Miss Sunshine: The Shooting Script (Newmarket Shooting Scripts Series)

The Good Shepherd: The Shooting Script (Newmarket Shooting Scripts Series)

ASIN: 1557046727

Book Description

"When we finished About a Boy, my brother Chris wanted to do something wildly different. I wanted to write a film of the same scale, a character study overtly set against the backdrop of American cultural issues. Writing the script on my own felt like going back to playwriting. And instead of bumming money off my dad, I was able to bum character traits from him to use for Dennis Quaid's character."—Writer/Director Paul Weitz, from his Introduction

The latest film from the Oscar®-nominated screenwriter of About a Boy, In Good Company is a dramatic comedy about the relationship between a 51-year-old businessman, Dan Foreman (Dennis Quaid), and his new 26-year-old boss, Carter Duryea (Topher Grace). Dan Foreman is headed for a shakeup. He is demoted from head of ad sales for a major magazine when the company is acquired in a corporate takeover. His new boss, Carter Duryea, is half his age—a business school prodigy who preaches corporate Synergy. While Dan develops clients through handshake deals, Carter cross-promotes the magazine with the cell phone division.

Both men are going through turmoil at home. Dan has two daughters—Alex, age 18, and Jana, age 16—and is shocked when his wife tells him she's pregnant. Between college tuition, the mortgage, and a new baby, Dan can't afford to lose his job. Carter, meanwhile, is dumped by his wife of seven months just as he gets his promotion. Dan and Carter's uneasy friendship is thrown into jeopardy when Carter falls for Dan's daughter Alex (Scarlett Johansson). Weitz's examination of life's surprises, ironies, and coincidences combine to form In Good Company.

The Newmarket Shooting Script book includes the complete screenplay, an introduction by writer/director Paul Weitz, production notes, a selection of black-and-white movie stills, and complete cast and crew credits.

GURPS Y2K: The Countdown to Armageddon (GURPS: Generic Universal Role Playing System)
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Post-Apocalypse Role-Playing

Pretty good

GURPS Y2K: The Countdown to Armageddon (GURPS: Generic Universal Role Playing System)
John M. Ford , Scott Haring , Kenneth Hite , Steve Jackson , Jeff Koke , Phil Masters , Sean Punch , David Pulver , and Robert Schroeck
Manufacturer: Steve Jackson Games
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Gurps Bio-Tech

ASIN: 1556344066

Customer Reviews:

Post-Apocalypse Role-Playing.......2002-11-13

GURPS Y2K seems poised to be a good sourcebook for post-apocalyptic role-playing. Don't be put off by the name - this book contains much more than just the millennium bug.

Starting with a chapter on Y2K (which we know on 20-20 hindsight never became the calamity that some were predicting), there are ideas in this book for everything from a complete world-wide computer shutdown, to "Mad Max" type worlds, and even the biblical "Judgement Day", along with several others. There's also a section on a super-hero world suffering from post-apocalypse blues.

The "sidebars" (sections of the book along the sides of each page) contain even more material that can be used to put your game world in a state of chaos. Some of these sidebars beg to be put into whole worlds of their own.

But the book suffers slightly when it reads a little like a collection of articles about post-apocalypse scenarios in gaming, rather than a single world presented in RPG terms. The =nine= authors each contributed a section or two to this book, and only the excellent effort by Sean Punch to put it all together under one roof keeps this book from being merely a collection of unrelated after Armageddon articles.

I'd still recommend this book for people wanting to see what their campaign world would look like after a major catastrophe, or for people wanting to explore what happens after.

Pretty good.......2000-04-06

Well, overall the book was pretty well made. It touched upon many of the common topics and settings for a post holocaust envirnoment including everything from minor computer glitches to the Biblical apacalypse and "Mad Max" and "The Postman" type situations. Even alien invasion was discussed in the essays. All seven authors of the book provided well written source matterial. Y2k also gives information on realistic rioting and anarchy.

There was one point I did not like about the book though. It would make many references to other GURPS source books, some of which were out of print, for more material on a subject. I feel that some of the writing was judt put in a advertisements and "plug" for other books.

Personally, I wish they had touched more on the "Mad Max," "Postman," and "Fallout" (a post-apacalyptic computer game) scenarios, but I do realize that the book was created for post Y2K campaigns and that everyone does not like what I like.

Overall, though, the book provides good post distaster material.

Book Description

Professor Charles Whitebread teaches students the eight secrets that will add precious points to every exam answer they write.

Customer Reviews:

Useless.......2005-05-18

This book does little more than expound the IRAC system, which will get you killed on exams. A much, much better book to get is "Getting to Maybe." Don't waste your time or money on this worthless waste of paper and ink.

Read this before taking the exam.......2005-01-19

Professor Whitebread has been teaching for a long time, and of course, he has been to law school as a student. These simple tips will help you prepare to write a better exam answer. These simple tips will also make the difference is how you finish in the class.

His main idea is to apportion your time. Although this seems to go without saying, students still run out of time and neglect to answer all the questions. This is probably the biggest problem students have. From the book, and from my experience, be sure you strictly adhere to the time you set aside.

The professor also discusses what kind of answers you will want to avoid, which is why I wrote the subject line I did here. I made the mistake of reading the book after my exams and realized that I should have rephrased some of my answers. Policy reasons are a necessity in any answer, but the answer must avoid sounding conclusory. The reason for an exam is to explain your answer and show your work, not state what you think is obvious.

I would recommend reading this before going into finals and recommend rereading it before the next set of finals.

Short, Sweet, and Effective.......2004-10-07

The quick help is short and effective. It tells you the basics of what you need without going into totally useless topics. Whitebread does a great job of breaking down the IRAC Method that we all love to hate. I would highly recommend reading this in the beginning of your first semester at law school.

Helpful But Certainly Could Have Been Better.......2003-11-17

Charles H. Whitebread's short treatise on how to achieve high grades in law school exams is a bit ambiguous in many instances and does not provide concrete examples of how one might actually outline through the IRAC (issues, rule, analysis, conclusion) method. Yes, he does talk about how one might start writing, but it would have been helpful if he had an actual outline of a real law school exam. If he had done so, I am sure this book would have been much more useful to first year law students who do not have the benefit of knowing what to expect.

However, many of his tips are important: for instance: (1) do not start writing the moment you are able to; instead, outline your case, which may take twenty minutes, and spend the next fourty minutes out of your hour writing in a clear, organized manner. The person who just starts writing without organization will get a poorer grade. (2) He says never to explain why you cannot finish on your test. Some professors won't know you were not able to finish unless you said so. Plus, you get no points for admitting your error, so why bother? (3) As long as you stick to the main points in the course, and don't focus on minute details, you probably will get an A or a B. Sounds good to me.

Michael Gordon

Waiting for Prof. Whitebread.......2003-08-01

As noted by other reviewers, the book is short, and I would add, as useless as it is brief. Wait until the author appears at your school to get a free copy. Spend your money on "Getting to Maybe" or taking the excellent LEEWS exam short-course. You may know the law, but without the ability to express it in the expected format in an organized manner at warp speed, you will find many doors closed to you forever. You will hear Whitebread's truisms a hundred times, but there is too little specificity here to help your performance.

Eight Secrets Top Exam Performance in Law School

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Eight Secrets Top Exam Performance in Law School
Whitebread
Manufacturer: Harcourt Legal & Professional Publications, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OJQUOW

Ake: The Years of Childhood
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Good Book

Heartwarming Childhood Memoir

An engrossing read

Excellent, if a bit confusing

A Densely Written, Deeply Evocative Memoir of Childhood

Ake: The Years of Childhood
Wole Soyinka
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Authors | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0679725407
Release Date: 1989-10-23

Amazon.com

When he was 4 years old, spurred by insatiable curiosity and the beat of a marching drum, Wole Soyinka slipped silently through the gate of his parents' yard and followed a police band to a distant village. This was his first journey beyond Aké, Nigeria, and reading his account is akin to witnessing a child's epiphany:

The parsonage wall had vanished forever but it no longer mattered. Those token bits and pieces of Aké which had entered our home on occasions, or which gave off hints of their nature in those Sunday encounters at church, were beginning to emerge in their proper shapes and sizes.

He returned, perched upon the handlebars of a policeman's bicycle, "markedly different from whatever I was before the march." The reader's horizons feel similarly expanded after finishing this astonishing book.

Nobel laureate Soyinka is a prolific playwright, poet, novelist, and critic, but seems to have found his purest voice as an autobiographer. Aké: The Years of Childhood is a memoir of stunning beauty, humor, and perception--a lyrical account of one boy's attempt to grasp the often irrational and hypocritical world of adults that equally repels and seduces him. Soyinka elevates brief anecdotes into history lessons, conversations into morality plays, memories into awakenings. Various cultures, religions, and languages mingled freely in the Aké of his youth, fostering endless contradictions and personalized hybrids, particularly when it comes to religion. Christian teachings, the wisdom of the ogboni, or ruling elders, and the power of ancestral spirits--who alternately terrify and inspire him--all carried equal metaphysical weight. Surrounded by such a collage, he notes that "God had a habit of either not answering one's prayers at all, or answering them in a way that was not straightforward."

In writing from a child's perspective, Soyinka expresses youthful idealism and unfiltered honesty while escaping the adult snares of cynicism and intolerance. His stinging indictment of colonialism takes on added power owing to the elegance of his attack. He also spears Nigeria's increasing Westernization, its movement toward modernity and materialism, as he describes his beloved village markets deteriorating from a "procession of magicians" to rows of "fantasy stores lit by neon and batteries of coloured bulbs" where the "blare of motor-horns compete with a high-decibel outpouring of rock and funk and punk and other thunk-thunk from lands of instant-culture heroes."

The book closes with an 11-year-old Soyinka preparing to enroll in a government college, declaring it "time to commence the mental shifts for admittance to yet another irrational world of adults and their discipline." Aké is an eloquent testament to the wisdom of youth. --Shawn Carkonen

Customer Reviews:

Good Book.......2007-01-12

The novel is quite good, however certain words and phrases do not add much meaning to the trend of what is going on; they are superflous. On the whole it it a good novel.

Heartwarming Childhood Memoir.......2005-04-21

I love African literature. It's beautiful and it's brilliant and not enough people are familiar with it (yet: I'm optimistic. There's tons of it out there and the many books I've read were great and well-received, so someday it'll catch on. It's scary how little people know about it: I meet people surprised that there even IS an African literature!!!). However, anyone who has read a lot of it knows that much of it is rather sad, which is to be expected considering much of Africa's colonial and post-colonial history.

However...THIS BOOK IS NOT SAD. It's filled with all the vitality, love, and humor of life itself.

Ake: The Years of Childhood is a hilarious, uproarious, touching story of the precocious young Wole (now a Nobel laureate in literature, deservedly so). Now, I don't often find books difficult but this book is a bit verbose at times but you have to stick with it because it's worth it. You will be rolling with laughter at Wole's adventures and you will grow to love his family.

Although most of the book is a joyous and humorous personal account of a Nigerian boy who grows up the son of the school principle around WWII, in an intelligent, colorful, and loving family, the ending of the book has some very interesting accounts of the Soyinka family's friendship with the Ransome-Kuti family (which produced the famous African musician Fela Kuti).

As part of the educated Yoruba elite in Africa, Wole's mother was friends with Kuti's mother and together they educated women, stood up to the colonists (in some of the best scenes in the book) and fought for female emancipation. This may come to a shock to those who know Fela Kuti's cultivated machismo, but these strong women are celebrated and assisted by the men in the village. African women had a unique position under colonialism in that they could stand up to colonial officials in a way African men could not have-British men (not always, but often) preferred not to use violence against women and saw that as part of their gentlemanly identity. Therefore, when

Mrs. Ransome-Kuti tells a colonial official who has ill treated her that "you were born but you were not bred" it is one of the most powerful moments in the book.

I can't recommend this book any more highly. Go get it right away! I promise you you won't regret it. This is the kind of book that makes you realize the power of reading: the power to open up a new world, a new culture, and feel you are part of it; the power to laugh along with the characters, to spend a few hours of your life delighted. It's an experience more than a book.

An engrossing read.......2003-07-28

Wole Soyinka takes us back to his childhood in colonial Nigeria and shares with us his experiences and thoughts on growing up Yoruba. The book is written for the most part from the perspective of the young Soyinka and hence is void of any criticism of events as they unfolded. For example, the stoning of the "pregnant mad woman" was related to us without any reasoning behind such behavior. I was disturbed that such a thing was allowed to happen without anyone opposing it.

He gives rich descriptions of the Nigerian ceremonies that took place during his youth, and of the conflict between Christian and traditional Nigerian beliefs. It is my belief that these experiences during Soyinka's youth were instrumental in forming his future (now current) perceptions of the World and Nigeria in particular. This makes the book extremely revealing as we are allowed to view the process of development that went on in the mind of the young Soyinka.

Read this book to be entertained, by its splatterings of humorous anecdotes and Yoruba wit. Read it to understand the background of Soyinka and of those of his kind. Finally read it because it is another of those great biographies of great men.

Excellent, if a bit confusing.......2001-07-07

This is a wonderful portrayal of both time and place, written through the eyes of the artist as a child. The descriptions are vivid and generally entertaining, once you get past the style of the author. He presents the story in a disjointed flow of events or images, and not until you realize that this is how childhood memory usually flows can you let yourself be swept into the current.

In the early chapters, the flow is nearly stream of consciousness, but there is a cohesion that comes as each chapter nears its end. Then the next chapter does it again. Later in the book, he seems to juxtapose time, going from present (with MacDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken lining the old main street ) to past, and describing the culture and society that these newcomers have replaced.

All in all, the quality of Wole Soyinka's storytelling held me against the confusion that his timelines created. Wonderful reading if you have the gumption not to have your literature spoon fed.

A Densely Written, Deeply Evocative Memoir of Childhood.......2000-09-13

There is a wonderful chapter in Wole Soyinka's "Ake: The Years of Childhood" which can be read as an extended metaphor for growing up or, more specifically, growing up in a small town in western Nigeria and becoming a world-recognized author and Nobel Prize winner. In that chapter Soyinka relates the story of how his older brother first hoisted the then four year old boy up on his shoulders so he could see over the wall, see outside the school compound, where he lived. This glimpse of the outside world fascinated the inquisitive young boy, so much so that the next time he heard a commotion outside the walls-a police band marching by-he ran to the gate, only to find it latched. As Soyinka relates: "Then I heard excited voices on the outside, obviously there were others before me who had the same idea. I banged on the gate and someone opened it."

It was an epiphany for the young boy, leaving the safe confines of the compound for the fascinations of the outside world. Soyinka clearly was enchanted by what he saw and experienced, following the band for many miles, to the next town, where he suddenly found himself alone. "The ragged, motley group of children who had followed, clowning, mimicking, even calling out orders had fallen off one by one. It occurred to me now that I had seen no one nor heard any of their festive voices for a while. They had all vanished, leaving no one but me."

Just as Wole, the little boy, plunged into the outside world only to find himself alone at the end, so has the mature Soyinka, the brilliant author of this densely written, deeply evocative childhood memoir, written himself into a singular position as Nigeria's leading and, perhaps most courageous, literary figure.

"Ake: The Years of Childhood" is not an easy book to read. Soyinka's prose is rich and detailed, his style at times elliptical, requiring the reader's careful attention. But the effort is certainly worth it, for Soyinka warmly and affectionately details not only his own memories and experiences from the age of four to eleven, but strikingly captures the universal feelings, sensations, and perceptions of childhood itself. Soyinka takes the particularity of growing up in a culture where traditional folklore, magic and superstition mix with Western Christianity, education and invention, where Yoruba is spoken along with English, where cultural and experiential references are polyglot, and he sees this particularity through the eyes of a child. By doing this, Soyinka brilliantly depicts not only his own experience of growing up in Nigeria during the late 1930s and 1940s, but also the experience of just plain growing up. It doesn't matter whether you know anything or nothing about Wole Soyinka or Nigeria to appreciate this marvelous memoir; it only matters that you have an inquisitive mind that wants to enter an even more inquisitive mind, the mind of a child.

Ake: The Years of Childhood
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Ake: The Years of Childhood
Wole Soyinka
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
British | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books | 18th Century | 19th Century | 20th Century | Classics | Contemporary | General | Historical | Humor | Letters & Correspondence | Middle | Old | Poetry | Renaissance | Shakespeare | Short Stories
ASIN: 0394722191
Release Date: 1983-09-12

Ake - The Years Of Childhood
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Ake - The Years Of Childhood
Wole Soyinka
Manufacturer: Aventura/Vintage Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | African | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
West African | African | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B000IX89MU

Ake: The Years of Childhood
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Ake: The Years of Childhood
Wole SOYINKA
Manufacturer: see notes for publisher info
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | African | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
West African | African | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B000MY2MYG

Book Description

In 1993, simply the idea that lesbians and gays should be able to serve openly in the military created a firestorm of protest from right-wing groups and powerful social conservatives that threatened to derail the entire agenda of a newly elected President. Nine short years later, in the wake of September 11, 2001, the Pentagon's suspension of discharge of gay and lesbians went largely overlooked and unremarked by political pundits, news organizations, military experts, religious leaders and gay activists. How can this collective cultural silence be explained?

Officially Gay follows the military's century-long attempt to identify and exclude gays and lesbians. It traces how the military historically constructed definitions of homosexual identity relying upon religious, medical, and psychological discourses that defined homosexuals as evil, degenerate, and unstable, making their risk to national security obvious, and mandating their exclusion from the Armed Services.

Officially Gay argues that this process made possible greater regulation and scrutiny of gays and lesbians both in and out of the military while simultaneously helping to create a gay and lesbian political movement and helped shape the direction that movement would take.

Customer Reviews:

Serious Epistomological study: creation of Gay identity.......2004-12-19

Looks like a book on Don't Ask Don't Tell, but is actually a book on the juncture of the epistemology of the concept of homosexuality, as reified by official policy exemplified by the military. Lehring's premise is that essentialist arguments are both wrong and destructive, and that a constructivist approach will better help us understand the current concept of a Gay identity. He is thoughtful, erudite and provocative, and the book is far better than its cover.

Something to read NOW!.......2003-08-03

In a time like this, when military policy and civil rights are intersecting in disastrous ways, Lehring's book can be read as a cautionary tale against expanding state power. Be careful for what you wish as Lehring suggests, as indicated in military policy, gays and lesbians have been a victim of their own organizing success. He argues that in both helping to create gay and lesbian identity and providing an arena for the evolution of gay community and politics, the military continues to play a central role in defining citizen's rights for minority groups in the US. A must read!

Book Description

This volume represents the first section of Friedrich A. Hayek's comprehensive three-part study of the relations between law and liberty. Rules and Order constructs the framework necessary for a critical analysis of prevailing theories of justice and of the conditions which a constitution securing personal liberty would have to satisfy.

Customer Reviews:

Worthwhile sequel to The Constitution of Liberty.......2004-12-18

The thesis of volume 1 of Law, Legislation, and Liberty is that "a condition of liberty in which all are allowed to use their knowledge for their purposes, restrained only by rules of just conduct of universal application, is likely to produce for them the best conditions for achieving their aims", and that "such a system is likely to be achieved and maintained only if all authority, including that of the majority of the people, is limited in the exercise of coercive power by general principles to which the community has committed itself" (p. 55). "[W]hat the spontaneous order of society provides for us is more important for everyone, and therefore for the general welfare, than most of the particular services which the organization of government can provide, excepting only the security provided by the enforcement of the rules of just conduct" (pp. 132-133). Therefore, "law is...to consist of abstract rules which make possible the formation of a spontaneous order by the free action of individuals through limiting the range of their actions" (i.e., through preventing coercion), and it is not to be "the instrument of arrangement or organization by which the individual is made to serve concrete purposes" (p. 71).

Law, Legislation, and Liberty was intended as a sequel to The Constitution of Liberty, in that Hayek wrote it to "fill in the gaps" that he felt existed in his argument in that earlier work. He wrote and published Law, Legislation, and Liberty on and off over a time-span of approximately 15 years (early-mid 1960 to mid-late 1970s), which were in part interrupted by ill health. Hayek admits that the result is at times repetitive and lacking in organization. The reason why he did not go through the effort of redoing the entire work upon completion is because he thought he might at that rate never finish it (he was 80 years old by the time volume 3 was published).

There are still plenty of great insights, which Hayek argues persuasively and in doing so manages to portray as common sense. There are also plenty of flashes of that true rhetorical brilliance characteristic of Hayek that can make his writings such a feast to the ear and mind. On the downside, however, these rhetorical gems are hidden in a large volume of pages that at times do indeed seem tedious, repetitive, and unorganized, unlike with The Constitution of Liberty, where they literally seem to jump off the page at you. All in all, read The Constitution of Liberty first, as Hayek himself suggests. And if you're not up for reading the approximately 500 pages that make up the complete Law, Legislation, and Liberty, two chapters (30 pages total) in the book The Essence of Hayek make for a comprehensive summary exposition of the ideas in the entire trilogy ("Principles of a Liberal Social Order", ch. 20 in The Essence of Hayek, covers vols. 1-2, and "Whither Democracy?", ch. 19, covers vol. 3).

Spontaneous Order.......2004-07-06

Hayek's book shows how order occurs naturally in society and in very large and complex organizations as a spontaneous response to numerous, disparate, even unanticipated purposes. We do not create social order deliberately; if you think about it, this is the reason why we find some laws contradict each other, and why people have different ideas about love of country and respect for others.

As a society, people tend to create general rules to govern as many examples of behavior as possible, to fit as many situations as possible, even those that haven't been imagined.

Hayek builds on two premises: (1) that humans have limited abilities to understand and predict all possible consequences of social choices and decisions, and (2) people abstract (verb; refers to how the mind works) reality to understand it.

The ideas in the book are not difficult to understand, but to read the book requires the reader to let go of the illusion that people can make rational decisions for society.

I enjoyed the heck out of this book........2003-07-19

I read this after reading Road to Serfdom. It's obviously a denser work, though relatively short. Still, the pages come across not so much as theory as just common sense put into more complex language so the academia nuts might be able to understand it also.

A masterpiece about philosophical bases of liberal thought.......1999-04-30

Hayek's classical book is against the totalitarians and their thought about legislation. He responses them saying that the legislation is not the tool to reconstruct the people and the economical relationships between them, but it is the method to explain the irrationally and naturally developping law more clearly. Additionally he argues the cartesian method of thinking because of its results which refuse the social evolution. Therefore Hayek finds the philosophical base of totalitarian thought in the belief that "we can create the welfare with law, if we arrange it logically". That's why he calls every kind of totalitarian thought as "constructive cartesian rationalism", because all of them want to reform the whole world, law and order from the beginning to realize their specific outcome like in DesCartes' method. (I think that it's the same as "the social engineer" description of Sir Karl Popper.)

Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume 1 : Rules and Order

Average customer rating:

Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume 1 : Rules and Order
F. A. Hayek
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OPGXKM

Book Description

Set in both the arid lands of Arizona and the political backdrop of Washington, D.C., Vision in the Desert documents the life and career of longtime senator Carl Hayden. One of the most powerful figures in the United States Congress, Hayden centered his public service career around water and its distribution, and his achievements are inseparable from the history of the West and the development of arid lands.

Carl Hayden became acquainted with reclamation and irrigation issues at an early age through his work with his father in the Salt River Valley. Elected to the House of Representatives in 1911, Hayden began a fifty-seven-year stint in the U.S. Congress, serving as a Democratic representative in the House for fifteen years and then in the Senate from 1927 until 1969. Issues of the development of the Colorado River occupied the majority of his congressional work. The 1968 authorization of the Central Arizona Project (CAP) highlights Hayden's efforts for this lifestream of the Southwest. Combining Hayden's childhood hopes and congressional endeavors, the CAP secured future economic and population growth by making possible the distribution of water to the growing urban and suburban areas of Phoenix and Tucson.

Vision in the Desert binds the works of this western lawmaker to the expansion of the American Southwest and chronicles the politics in the region. Jack August, Jr., takes the reader on a comprehensive journey of the politician's career-through visions of the nineteenth century, the accomplishments of the twentieth century, and the probable implications for the approaching millennium.

Customer Reviews:

The book's title describes the contents.......2007-07-30

I came across this book while looking for a biography of Carl Hayden. While there is a considerable amount of biographical information in this book, it is not primarily a biography. Instead the title of the book is an good description of this books contents: a description of the political battles involving over water in the lower Colorado River basin and the role and impact that Carl Hayden played in this political drama. Towards the goal expressed by the title, this book is well written and an engrossing read. If you are looking for a general biography of Hayden that does not focus primarily on a single area of the senator's career then Ross R. Rice's Carl Hayden is a better choice.

A miracle it was!.......2004-03-14

Author Jack August tells an engrossing tale of the politics of water in the American southwest which is virtually the same as the past, present, and future of this region. Arizonan Carl Hayden became the Arizona's first congressman (when Arizona only had one congressman) upon statehood in 1912 and moved to the the U.S. Senate in 1927 where he remained until retiring in 1969. In today's era of sound bites and short attention spans, Hayden labored for decades, leading the way to first establish federal control over western water management (so the resources of the federal government would build the needed dams and other projects needed to tame and manage the area's rivers), then parceling out the rights to the water between the various states and other jurisdictions through legislation, compacts and court decisions, and finally, after it was established by the U.S. Supreme Court in "California vs Arizona" that Arizona did have rights to Colorado River water, getting the authorization and funding for the Central Arizona Project which today brings water from the Colorado River near Parker, AZ to the mushrooming metro areas of Phoenix and Tucson. August writes a technically detailed book. Its not a fast read, but I found it indispensible to understanding the past and probably future of this state which over 5.5 million people now call home.

Politics of Water Resource Management.......1999-05-12

August brings extensive expertise concerning the history of water and hydroelectric power development in the Southwestern United States. The story of water politics in the American southwest is instructive for the governments of both the United States and Canada.

Management of North America's water resource is poised to become the defining issue in Canadian-American relations in the twenty first century. Certainly, that issue will dominate trade negotiations and will precipitate fallout for the movement of other major commodities of Canadian goods into American markets.

In Arizona, water rights was topical as a political concern before the turn of the century to 1900. Central to the issue was Carl Hayden who was elected in 1911 and served in the U.S. Congress for the next 57 years; as a Democratic member of the House of Representatives until 1927 and then as a Senator from 1927 to 1969.

August reveals in this engagingly-written biography that Hayden knew from 1914 that his political future would be tied to water resource development; a thought documented as a young politician in letters to his parents. Hayden's personal papers disclose his legendary kindness in all relationships and perhaps part of the secret to his long political career.

In constructing the history, August draws out the competing interests of upper basin states with those downstream of the Colorado River, bringing in the early interest expressed by Los Angeles for electricity and water. What was involved was large scale manipulation of water in an extremely arid environment.

The protracted negotiations resulted in CAP -- the Central Arizona Project -- which put Colorado River water to thirsty agricultural areas and provided for the unimpeded development of Phoenix and Tucson by protecting them from water shortages. The bill was signed into law September 30, 1968 by President Johnson. The cost of implementation, US$1.3 billion, was the most expensive single Congressional authorization in history. Hayden considered the accomplishment the most significant contribution of his career.

The book is extensively researched and animated through interviews with Barry Goldwater and others prominent in the issue. The author has also drawn fom Johnson's presidential papers, court cases, and six decades of the Congressional Record. Some flavor of the thrust and parry of political debate has been drawn from accounts in dozens of newspapers and journals. That all of these sources have been assembled in one volume is a valuable gift to future scholars.

Evoking transportation images to bracket Hayden's working life, August reminds us that "He began his public career riding a horse and buggy to his office and ended it voting for funds that ultimately enabled him to watch people walk on the moon." No doubt, those astronauts were looking for water!

Contention over management of North American water resources has bracketed both the beginning and end of this century and will carry on well into the next. The World Bank warns us that the wars of the next century will be about water. August's prediction: "In the future, the use of water will underlie every public policy decision made in the American West."

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