Long Journey Towards the Light

Book Description

"Long Journey Towards the Light" is a compelling true-life account of what it is like to be same-gender-loving in a world filled with judgement and prejudices. The author weaves a story of intrigue and humor. The personal details that he shares about his life seem almost unbelievable. He seamlessly walks the reader through alcoholism, drug addiction, murder, the death penalty, spousal abuse, suicide, and death. The vulnerability the author displays is a testament to his courage. The writing is simple and straightforward, the characters interesting and the stories amazing. Financial ruin, betrayals by friends and lovers, family tragedy---this true-life account beats a fictional romance novel any day.

Book Description

Go mobile with the most popular motion tool on the Web. Written by a team of software development experts, this thorough resource will help you build, deploy, and run rich media applications across multiple channels and devices. Plus, utilize JSP, ASP.NET, or ColdFusion MX to port information dynamically.

Mobile Macromedia Flash MX with Flash Remoting & Flash Communication Server

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Mobile Macromedia Flash MX with Flash Remoting & Flash Communication Server
Nicholas Pang Alan Yeung
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill/OsborneMedia
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OG9YUM

Book Description

A celebration of the great songsmith's political engagement.

"Keep a good head and carry a light bulb."—Bob Dylan's response to the question "What is your advice for young people?", London 1962.

Bob Dylan's lyrics are at once abstruse and evocative, urgent and timeless. But, as Mike Marqusee's compelling new book makes clear, behind the anarchy and playfulness of Dylan's imagery lie meanings that are often highly charged with political and social concerns.

It was blues and folk songs that first led Bob Dylan to politics. But it was politics that unlocked his own astonishing songwriting ability, evidenced by dazzling responses in the early 1960s to the civil rights movement and the threat of nuclear war. Marqusee traces the young song-writer's subsequent reluctance to be pigeonholed, his rejection of "protest," and his turn to electric rock at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. He shows the way folk tradition, modernism, and commercial popular culture are sublimely fused in Dylan's masterworks of the mid-1960s, notably on the albums Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, and discusses the artist's quest for American identity—amid the continuing carnage in Vietnam and growing chaos at home—in The Basement Tapes.

Following his acclaimed study of Muhammad Ali, Redemption Song, Mike Marqusee again demonstrates an engaging ability to fuse biography and politics, storytelling and original insight.

Customer Reviews:

a history book that tells you how the people feel.......2007-04-03

In his Chronicles, Dylan states that he has never read a history book that tells how people feel. Chimes of Freedom, however, is such a history book. In researching Dylan, this is by far the best source I have come across, but more than that, Chimes of Freedom relates the brutal realities of civil rights oppression in the South of the 60's. Marqusee analyzes not just Dylan but also the incredible struggles that the singer witnessed, causing the reader to feel the same anger and sorrow that these protesters felt.

excellent.......2006-07-06

This is an excellent book. It is especially reccomended for serious Dylan fans. very easy to read, incredibly insightful. Tremendous assimilation of history and music. if this was a test the author would get a 96%. he rarely gets it wrong. one of the best dylan books that i have ever read.

What a remarkable book.......2004-08-25

I have been waiting a for a book with this level of political sophistication for a long time. It's finally here. Marqusee sees the politics in America in the 1960s in its complexity, and Dylan's music equally so. As a result, he avoids the cliches about both and teases out many new insights and comments. Bravo! An especially important book for young activists. Marqusee clears away the romance and the clutter of those years so that you can better appreciate the difficulty of struggle today. And at the same time, he clears the way for you to find companionship in Dylan's music from that time.

Freedom Chimes.......2004-06-25

This is the third book on Dylan I have read in the last couple of weeks, and by coincidence they all take quite different approaches that serve to sharpen the contrasts in how Dylan's lyrics are interpreted. The first two, by Marqusee and Ricks are essentially contextualist. Ricks' context is the canon of Anglo Saxon poetry and literature which, I presume, he thinks enables us to understand better Dylan's lyrics (his choice of what is great poetry in Dylan is eccentric). Marqusee takes a different form of contextualism, and sees the events, political and social as providing the context for understanding Bob Dylan's lyrics. I found his elaboration on political events and movements extremely illuminating, but at times they were not wholly integrated and appeared instead as juxapostions against the lyrics rather than serving to clarify them. The third book is on both Dylan and Leonard Cohen (much underrated in the States but huge in Europe). The author, I see, has also edited a book with Gary Browning due out in November 2004 with a similr title to Marqusee's The Political Art of Bob Dylan). Boucher in his Dylan and Cohen appraises the two types of contextualism just mentioned, and with reference to the statements of Dylan and Cohen show how referents often serve to obscure rather than illuminate meaning. In many of the songs it is the images rather than the meanings that are evocative. Here a prime example would be 'Desolution Row'. Anyway, all three books are well worth a read.

Vanguard Into Rearguard.......2003-10-06

In "Chimes of Freedom: The Politics of Bob Dylan's Art," Mike Marqusee treats us to a full-on analysis of the cultural, political and historical significance of Bob Dylan in the context of the early-to-mid 60s when Dylan was at the height of his powers. But even more, he shows how Dylan, at the vanguard of the social protest movement, was in the vanguard of the next development as well -- the turn away from the mass politics of the left, the social patriotism of Guthrie, toward the private politics of expressive individualism, the search for "authenticity" in an increasingly inauthentic world. With psychological nuance and sensitivity, he explores Dylan's defensiveness and arrogance, his sometimes convoluted and confused politics and his attempts to cope with nearly overwhelming fame and notoriety in the midst of social and political turmoil.

Essentially, Dylan is the core around which the story of the decline of the American Left is told. Marqusee provides insight in the factors that gave rise to the sense of hopefulness of the early 60s, a hopefulness that could not be sustained by most of the new white college kid converts to the civil rights and other social justice movements. Dense, packed with insight, this is a cogent corrective to the many misconceptions and platitudes that have come to describe this turbulent time in American history. In Marqusee's reading of the time, in the contextual backdrops he weaves, rescues a complex era from the oversimplifications of the media, e.g., the Woodstock Nation.

Emblematic of Dylan's break with the Old Left was his adoption of rock and roll instrumentation at Newport. Launched into new sonic and social spaces, Dylan cleared the way for all kinds of experimentation, the explosion of creativity that ensued in such performers as Hendrix. But in the explosion, Marqusee insists, the consumer state, sniffing around for new game, created an entire new marketing segment out of the excitement and wild extravagance of the ethos of personal freedom. Soon, he shows, protests were uncool. The struggle did not provide the instant gratification that young white America had come to expect from the consumer state. Soon, the enormous wave of civil disobedience and protest against the Vietnam War subsided into the cynical selling of rebellious culture and its many accoutrements.

Marqusee suggests, perhaps a bit too patly, that consumer culture and its mechanisms swamped the last vestiges of leftist New Deal politics. Still, he convincingly defends the notion that Dylan after emulating the social patriotism of the folk-singers in the generation before his, began to form a more profound and more withering critique of the "system," a critique which eventually pitted him against the Old Left, who still believed in the possiblity of the Popular Front. Eventually, the New Left took up the notion of a revolution in consciousness as the only way to defeat the Establishment -- and as they did mimicked Dylan's search for the authentic. A vexed notion, authenticity, as Marqusee notes, all the more sought after as it become harder and harder to find in the midst of the expolsion of the consumer state. He shows us this tension in Dylan, who, after his early anthemic songs in the style of Guthrie, moved toward the imagistic, the satirical, the non-sequitur, the private hipster moves of Kerouac and Ginsberg and their in-crowd critique of (consumer) society as a way to distance himself from the Seeger and Baez crowd.

Another strategy Marqusee employs well is the examination of Dylan's evolution against other music and other performers. He does a particularly insightful job with Curtis Mayfield, showing how the music of protest came from gospel and was given new life by artists like Mayfield. He also contrasts Phil Ochs with Dylan, who remained until the end a protest singer in the more generally accepted mold. In the epilogue, he cannily examines Dylan's decline through the rise of one of John Hammonds "New Dylan" -- Springsteen. He suggest that Springsteen started out by aping the moves of the imagistic, stream-of-consciousness era Dylan, then, after studying some history and the some of the roots of popular music, began to align himself with the older stream of social protest music in the "Tom Joad" album.

No book of left social criticism is able to avoid mentioning Adorno and the Frankfurt School. Thus Marquesee cites Adorno's views on popular music in his analysis. Quite rightly disputes Adorno's views on the exploitation by capital of "popular" music in the case of early Dylan, but suggests Adorno's view of the impossibility of popular music remaining truly of the people in a consumer state. Adorno's grand and paranoid theories still a bit redolent of the determinism of his Marxist heritage, but there is more than a little truth in his theory. Still, more to my taste are the citations from Adorno's sometime friend and colleague, Walter Benjamin. More Dylanesque, more elliptical, more paradoxical, less programmatic.

Dylan, an unwilling accomplice of the exploitation of rebel culture, troubled by his fame and its implications, grew conservative after "John Wesley Harding." His great period came to an end just as the mass of young people began to experience the 60s, to "question authority." Marqusee has gone deep into this chaotic, watershed time, and pulled from it through his examination of Dylan, an historical and cultural vision which is bracing, balanced, and thoughtful. Incidentally, a good companion read is "Power and Protest" by Jeremi Suri which shows how the leaders of both the free and unfree worlds after promising good times in the late 50s and early 60s, all moved toward conservative agendas in the face of a protest movement among youth, a movement in some ways fueled by the grand gestures and promises made -- "The New Frontier" and "The Great Leap Forward" -- and upon which they had not been able to deliver during the nuclear stalemate.

Book Description

Brady Games Chocobo's Dungeon 2 Official Strategy Guide features a complete Bestiary of all the enemy-infested dungeons. Need help on defeating a particularly nasty enemy, or having trouble staying healthy? Check out the Items, Weapons, and Spells section for all the details. PLUS GAME SECRETS!

Customer Reviews:

A good book.......2000-04-22

This strategy guide was good because it explaind the secrets of the game without ruining it. I also liked that it was indepth and had correct information this why I gave it a four star reveiw

Book Description

ArcGIS is the newest and most powerful GIS technology from ESRI, and this comprehensive reference teaches Geographic Information System (GIS) technology users the concepts and methods for its customization. As ArcObjects are the building blocks of COM-based ArcGIS software, GIS professionals are given an introduction to basic object-oriented programming concepts and the classes, properties, and methods that make ArcObjects unique. Also stressed are the use of Visual Basic for Applications and the use of ArcObjects to modify the ArcGIS interface, change its basic operations, and create entirely new functionality. Included are two large-scale, fold-up object diagrams.

Customer Reviews:

Review of Getting to Know ARC OBJECTS.......2007-08-13

This book exceeded my expectations as a beginner. It is simple to follow yet stimulating enough to maintain my interest. Persons without experience and needing to do customization will find this extremely useful. Recommended for young entrants in the field of GIS who are focused on application development.

Save your money: Ditch the ESRI class and buy this book instead.......2007-02-21

I've read the ESRI ArcObjects course material and I have to say that this book is far better. I'm not a programmer, I just need to occasionally write code at work. For the last project that I was working on, I dug through the ESRI coursework and then a friend at work mentioned that they had this book. I asked to borrow it, and I must say that I'm impressed.

The examples were excellent, and the book took the time to actually explain what was going on. Using this book I had a working core for the program in about two hours, with no previous experience. I dug through the ESRI coursework for about six hours and came up fairly empty handed. I've ordered a copy of this for work and now I've ordered one for home use (which is kind of like unpaid work). The examples work with ArcGIS 9.1, which is nice. I haven't tried them in 9.2, but I have no reason to doubt that the book would still be relevant.

With a price this low, the book is a good deal. Even if it only helps you learn a few new tricks with ArcObjects, it's certainly worth the price.

good beginners book.......2007-02-20

This book really helped me understand the underlying principles of programming with VBA and ArcObjects. I found it very useful, the best ESRI affiliated book I have used yet.

Examples still works at ArcGIS 9.1.......2006-09-20

Even though we are on ArcGIS 9.1, all the examples in this book still worked, since ESRI assures that the interfaces will still work from release to release. The exercises cover the basics of simple applications: adding tools, building forms with drop down lists, programmatically adding layers, setting symbolization and changing the layout. There was also a useful example of summing a field for records in a feature class. The method with VBA allows adding buttons and drop downs and storing them into the map document. This would also work to create a template, but would not be used to create a Dynamic Link Library ( DLL. ). There was an introduction to the object model diagrams, but I did not feel confident that I could use those diagrams to find out how to use new objects not covered in the book. The good counter to that is the many scripts available on the ESRI's web sites.

Great for graphics, a bit weak for tables.......2006-02-01

As a former MapInfo user, I miss everything there is about the ease of programming there. Not the author's fault of course, but the point is that ArcObjects is not that easy for novice programmers. This book makes a valiant attempt to plug the gap (see the impenetrable ESRI documentation to see how vast the gap is!) and generally succeeds. The graphics side is well covered, the explanations are sound and I'm generally happy with the book. My only criticism, from a researcher viewpoint, is that table manipulation is not covered as well as other sections. This is the section that covers creating and updating fields. It seems rushed and akwardly placed in the last chapter or so. I'd have liked more on that, but there again, this book was written for a wider audience than me. Recommended.

Book Description

This anthology comprises 3 pamphlets-The Poverty of Student Life; Totality for Kids; and The Decline and Fall of the Spectacular Commodity Economy plus eyewitness accounts of the Paris May '68 events. Much of the Situationist creed was produced in pamphlet form and these 3 were crucial in creating the Situationist legend. They provide both an introduction to the ideas of the Situs and a provocatively seductive invitation to a life of freedom & revolt which prefigues many of the themes of today's mass protestors. Illustrated throughout with photos of the May '68 events and the graffiti that played such a famous role. The 7"X7" size replicates size of the Parisian cobblestones used by the protestors.

Book Description

The experiences of Africans in the Old World--the Mediterranean and Islamic worlds, is followed by their movement into the New, where their plight in lands claimed by Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French and English colonial powers is analyzed from enslavement through the Cold War. Particular attention is paid to the everyday lives of the working classes and their cultural development. Their exploits, challenges, and struggles are covered over a broad time frame that links as well as differentiates past and present circumstances.

Customer Reviews:

Reversing Sail ( A History of The African Diaspora ).......2007-03-30

Reversing sail: A history Of The African Diaspora, by Michael A. Gomez, knocks it out of the ball park; with this highly engaging, well reseached, & wonderfully written book. He leaves no thread untied, in bringing together the history of the African Diaspora; and his scholarship is beyond reproach. He unites the African Diaspora in a insightful, "Holistic" way, better than any book on the subject I have read so far,I defiantly, highly, recommened this wonderful book !

Excellent source.......2006-12-29

Professor Gomez has written a rather concise but scholarly general overview of the history of the African Diaspora. For three years I have been teaching a course in the Afr. and Afr. Amer. Studies department at the University of Memphis which is designed to introduce the student to the concept and early history of the Diaspora. I had also been assiduously searching for a quality, cost efficient text which could serve as a compliment to my notes. I think that I have found it in this work.

A unique history.......2005-05-27

This book has a statement in its epilogue that is among the best I've ever seen as a match between the subject matter and the purpose of the book itself - Michael A. Gomez writes of the growth of reconnection between Africa proper and those scattered around the world, stating that, `Given the ongoing impoverishment of many in Africa and the Diaspora, such interrelationships require deeper and more practical meaning if they are to play a significant role in ending the despair. The incredible beauty and creativity of the African Diaspora, combined with its unbelievable suffering and disadvantage, are contradictions awaiting resolution.'

Gomez is a professor of history at NYU, a university that offers degree programmes in the study of the African Diaspora. Gomez remarks on the value of the interactions with people at the university in his acknowledgements - it is in the storytelling and conversations that many subjects such as this one come to greater life and clarity. Gomez writes that the story of the African Diaspora is unlike any other in the history of the world, full of contradiction and ambiguity, but nonetheless sharing a pedigree as ancient as almost any other continuing society in the world.

Gomez makes the distinction between the study of the African Diaspora and the study of African Americans in two ways: first, it looks to see the influence of and influences on African-descended persons in different ways in new non-African environments and cultures; and second, it makes comparisons and examines relationships between these communities in geographically separated or distinct ways. It is not tied to the American nation-state, or any other particular nation-state or continent, but looks at persons of African descent outside Africa on a global scale.

There are shared features, however, that many of these communities share beyond their point of origin. Many of the communities find an experience of enslavement, a struggle to maintain traditional African culture, struggles against discrimination, and continuing identification with Africa as common bonds. Gomez divides the book into two sections, the `old world' and the `new world'. Old world topics include the ancient cultures in and around Africa (Egypt, Nubia, Greece and Rome), biblical themes and influences (and the broader context of Judeo-Christian history in African Diaspora themes), and Islamic cultural influences. The role of Africans in each of these histories and traditions is varied and significant; some myths are laid to rest here (the Islamic cultures practiced slavery as did the Western cultures, and in some places continue to have race-relation issues that stem from economic and cultural disadvantages coming out of this period much as the Western world has had), and points of difficulty in understanding and researching are identified (the lack of primary sources, sustained communities preserving histories, etc. means that much has been lost).

With regard to the new world, the history begins with the transatlantic slave trade, particularly the Middle Passage. Slavery was not a monolithic institution, and slavery was practiced differently in different parts of the new world. Thus, the response of the African descendents and the dominant culture vary from place to place; Gomez looks at slavery experience from colony to colony as well as from general regional perspectives. South America, Central America, the Caribbean, and North America all had different purposes and different treatment toward slaves. Again, Gomez lays certain myths to rest: `Although there were 8 million white Southerners in 1860, only 384,884 were slaveholders. This would suggest that the vast majority of whites had no relationship to slavery, had no vested interest in it, but just the opposite was true.' The dominant culture needed the institution of slavery, even if it was only a minority of members of that culture who actually owned the slaves.

Gomez also looks at the emancipation processes of the slaves beyond the North American perspective, showing the different ways in which the struggle for freedom and the achievement of the same manifested in different countries. For example, Haiti's Revolution in the late eighteenth century is shown to be both `crowning achievement' and an ironic catalyst for worsening slavery conditions elsewhere. The aftermath continues to be felt to this day, as `those who struggled so valiantly against tyranny have only met with a U.S.-led policy of ostracism and indifference every since.' Gomez also highlights the experience in Cuba, distinct from many other experiences in the Americas, as a place where the post-slavery situation did not automatically become a place of racial tension and prejudice.

Gomez' final two chapters show the reconnection and movement of people back toward their history, culture and identity, while still remaining, as members of the Diaspora, outside of their ancestral homeland. Communities reconnected with Africa as well as connected for the first time with each other; people of African descent all over the world had the freedom and resources, however limited, to make their own connections on a global scale. This includes but is not limited to political, social, and artistic connections - in areas such as sports and music, there is substantial success across such international boundaries.

Gomez ends each chapter with a narrative bibliography for further readings and research. Gomez states specifically that his intention is not to be exhaustive or comprehensive, but rather to give an introduction into the various places, times, events and persons connected with the broad topic of the African Diaspora. In this regard, Gomez succeeds. The text is interesting and accessible, giving sufficient detail without becoming tedious but also not lacking information or leaving things unaccounted for, save when the primary source material simply is not available (as is the case frequently, and this is part of the issue that Gomez highlights throughout the text). The index is useful, and there are a few maps and pictures scattered throughout the book. I might wish for one bibliography listing in the back for ease of reference, and footnoting through the text for further identification of sources, but these are minor quibbles given the scope and purpose of the book.

Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora.(Book review): An article from: The Journal of African American History

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Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora.(Book review): An article from: The Journal of African American History
Larry Hudson
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B000JYW2K8
Release Date: 2006-10-24

Book Description

This digital document is an article from The Journal of African American History, published by Thomson Gale on June 22, 2006. The length of the article is 1129 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: Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora.(Book review)
Author: Larry Hudson
Publication: The Journal of African American History (Magazine/Journal)
Date: June 22, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 91 Issue: 3 Page: 335(3)

Article Type: Book review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora

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Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora
Michael A. Gomez
Manufacturer: New York: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000IWHUCG

Average customer rating:

Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora.
Michael A. Gomez
Manufacturer: see notes for publisher info
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000M4MKG6

Customer Reviews:

Malarky.......2007-08-30

This is the only way I can even begin to describe the whole story behind this book. Granted managing scientists and the collection of diverse personalities in a lab setting could yield reams of paper on gallons of ink and barely scratch the surface. However, what we have with this book is a bunch of "feel good" cases and exercises that would never stand up to the challenges of a real life lab setting. Not to mention the complexity of ego's that were oversimplified here, the insecurity of funding (whether start-up biotech or grant driven academdia), the insane hours, the underemployment, etc.
This book is nothing but a great marketing tool and money maker for the writer(s). Granted some people may find this book a valuable tool but this speaks more to how poorly prepared they are to manage than to the quality of the book.
I also find it ironic that this author is giving advice to anyone after his ludicrous performance at Biovest. It's something akin to hiring Enron execs to manage your personal retirement fund.

Scientists are people too!.......2006-12-11

The Cohens make a detailed case that science is not all that matters in a laboratory: how well the scientists interact with each other can have a great impact on the progress of projects. Further, they suggest strategies for dealing with problems at all stages -- from resolving initial arguments to defusing longstanding conflicts. These strategies include approaches for both managers and subordinates that take into account the power dynamics at work when approaching a problem with someone who has a different amount of power in the discussion. Overall, this book deals with a kind of problem solving most of us dont get taught in school that is vital to maintaining one's sanity in the absence of an understanding supervisor who knows these techniques.

A must for lab managers and researchers..........2005-06-07

I think Carl and Suzanne have provided a real contribution to the discipline of technology management. I especially like the concrete examples in the case studies and the exercises at the end of each chapter. As I read through it, I kept thinking of people I would like to send it to - for example, some of our friends' kids who are science grad students, people teaching in Management of Technology programs, and my friends who are managing technology groups in commercial environments.

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