The Greatest Game Ever Played: Harry Vardon, Francis Ouimet, and the Birth of Modern Golf

Average customer rating:

The best book I have read in many years

Great Gift of the Greatest Game

Entertaining mix of fiction and nonfiction

golf and loving it

Not even a novice

The Greatest Game Ever Played: Harry Vardon, Francis Ouimet, and the Birth of Modern Golf
Mark Frost
Manufacturer: Hyperion
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

History of Sports | Miscellaneous | Sports | Subjects | Books
General | Golf | Sports | Subjects | Books
General | Sports | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

The Grand Slam : Bobby Jones, America, and the Story of Golf

The Greatest Game Ever Played

Bobby Jones, Stroke of Genius (Special Edition)

A Game Of Golf

The Legend of Bagger Vance

ASIN: 0786869208
Release Date: 2002-11-06

Book Description

rancis Ouimet and Harry Vardon came from different worlds and different generations, but their passion for golf set them on parallel paths that would collide in the greatest match their sport had ever known. A young Massachusetts native, Francis was only three years removed from his youthful career as a lowly caddie. Harry was twice his age, the greatest British champion in history, and innovator of the modern grip and swing. Through exacting hard work, perseverance, and determination, Vardon had escaped a hopeless life of poverty; the unknown Ouimet dared to dream of following in his hero's footsteps. When the two men finally came together in their legendary battle at the 1913 U.S. Open, its heartstopping climax gave rise to the sport of golf as we know it today. Weaving the stories of Ouimet and Vardon as his narrative, Mark Frost creates a uniquely involving, intimate epic; equal parts sports biography, sweeping social history, and emotional human drama. Including historical photographs, The Greatest Game Ever Played is sure to be a must-read for millions of sports and history fans, and all who have ever dared to reach for their dreams.

Customer Reviews:

The best book I have read in many years.......2007-10-19

I recently started playing golf and picked up this book at the library after reading the reviews on Amazon. I read through this book in 5 days and had a hard time putting it down everynight. It is an amazingly well told story that will keep you always wanting to read more. Very inspirational. My favorite book I have read to date.

Great Gift of the Greatest Game.......2007-09-11

I bought this as a gift for my husband, who said it is one of the best books that he has ever read. He even described a greater understanding of the psychology of golf that will make the playing of it more enjoyable for him. I have rarely seen him so enthusiastic over a book, but I would say that you'd have to be a golf fan to read it.

Entertaining mix of fiction and nonfiction.......2007-08-17

This book was truly enjoyable and very hard to put down. It is a page turner that yields valuable insight into the birth of golf in Scotland, England, and America. This book contains many valuable facts that may be unknown to the casual sports fan like myself. I recommend this book to anyone who is looking for an entertaining read on the beginnings of golf and the inspirational story of underdog Francis Ouimet.

However, this book contains a lot of fiction. The "states of mind" of Vardon, Ouimet, Ray, Lord Northcliffe, etc. are pure speculation. Frost has definitely opted for an overdramatization of the story to give it wide appeal (and movie appeal) so it is difficult at times to distinguish facts from fiction. Purists and true golf buffs might be annoyed by the blatant largesse of Frost's fiction.

Nevertheless, the book is an easy and enjoyable read.

golf and loving it.......2007-07-24

I bought this book for my brother in law and he really doesn't read many books. He just usually reads the paper.
He open it up and read this book in one setting. He thought is was just about some person in past years and what his game was about. He found it informative entertaining at the same time. He has read this book at least 2 more times. If you love golf,
then you will love this book.

Not even a novice.......2007-07-06

I'm not a golfer. Not even a novice. The only golf experience I have is falling asleep on the couch as a little girl while my dad or grandpa watched yet another golf tournament. ChiChi Rodriguez was my favorite, and I am familiar with all the greats of the 1980s and a few of the ones from the 90s.
I started reading this book after watching the last quarter of the movie. I thought it would give me something to talk about with my dad. As it turned out, this was one of the most well-written biographies that I have ever read. It was captivating and extremely well written. Not only did I learn so much about golf, but also about the presidents at the time, the social climate, and even meteorology. Rather than being boring, the hole by hole commentary was actually fascinating! I still don't understand much about the different clubs, and I still don't know how to golf, but I have a greater appreciation for the sport that my father loves so much, and we DID have a great conversation about the book once I finished it. So, if you're not a golfer, but you want to be able to relate to the golfers in your life, I highly recommend that you read this fabulous book! I'm so glad I did!
Furthermore, I'd read ANYTHING written by Mark Frost!

The Greatest Game Ever Played Harry Vardon, Francis Ouimet, and the Birth of Modern Golf

Average customer rating:

The Greatest Game Ever Played Harry Vardon, Francis Ouimet, and the Birth of Modern Golf
Mark Frost
Manufacturer: Hyperion
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000J40NPY

Book Description

Throughout his many writings, Michael Novak, one of the leading Catholic social theorists of our times, has urged us to adopt a tripartite system of democratic capitalism including a market economy, a democratic polity, and a moral-cultural system that would nourish the values and virtues on which free societies depend. Three in One introduces the reader to Novak's portrait of democratic capitalism.

Customer Reviews:

Another triumph.......2001-08-17

Professor Edward Younkins has selected 29 articles from newspapers and journals, beginning with Novak's first break from social democracy "A Closet Capitalist Confesses" Washington Post (March 1976) and " An Underpraised and Undervalued System" (Worldview August, 1977) up to "Solidarity in a Time of Globalization." He collects these essays under five headings -- the theory of democratic capitalism; free persons and the common good; religion and morality; the responsibilities of the corporation; the global arena - and concludes with the autobiographical essay "Controversial Engagements." Younkins located these articles in well-known journals such as The Public Interest and First Things, in lesser-known journals such as Worldview, Public Opinion, Economic Affairs (London) The Journal of Ecumenical Studies, and the Dravo Review and previously unpublished material. He has included substantial essays such as "The Communitarian Individual in America," "The Silent Artillery of Communism," "The Evangelical Basis of a Social Market Economy," "The Future of Civil Society," "The Jewish and Christian Foundation of Human Dignity," "Economics as Humanism," and "The International Vocation of American Business." He also retrieved two unpublished pieces, one of which offers a new definition of social justice to overcome the powerful objections of Friedrich Hayek. Much of the periodical literature in which Novak has developed the idea of democratic capitalism over the years appears in this collection, in addition, Younkins appends a valuable bibliography listing further articles. The collection displays the development of Novak's thought on democratic capitalism from its embryonic beginnings through its later unfolding.

Book Description

This is the fourth in a series of annuals from the National Bureau of Economic Research that are designed to stimulate research on problems in applied economics, to bring frontier theoretical developments to a wider audience, and to accelerate the interaction between analytical and empirical research in macroeconomics.

Contributions to this 1989 edition include: The Monetary History After Twenty-Five Years: New Evidence on the Money-Output Relationship, Christina Romer and David Romer. Restrictions on Financial Intermediaries and Implecations for Aggregate Fluctuations: Canada and the U.S., 1870-1908, Stephen Williamson. The Thatcher "Miracle," Charles Bean with Jim Symons. The Revised NBER Indexes of Coincident and Leading Economic Indicators, James Stock and Mark Watson. Consumption, Income, and Interest Rates: The Euler Equation Approach Ten Years Later, John Campbell and N. Gregory Mankiw. U.S. Earnings and Income Inequality: Recent Trends, Frank Levy. Business Cycle Models with Increasing Returns, Kevin Murphy, Andrei Shleifer, and Robert Vishny.

Olivier Blanchard and Stanley Fischer are both Professors of Economics at MIT.

Average customer rating:
Bathroom Baseball Quiz-16 Copy-Prepak
John Murphy
Manufacturer: Not Avail
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Humor | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0940462176

Book Description

This book is designed for the person who may know nothing about music and has had no previous accordion training. Included with the book to facilitate the learning process is an instructional recording by the author! This effective exceptional teaching tool will motivate and guide the beginner student from basic accordion familiarization and music theory to quickly achieving results by playing songs such as Scarborough Fair and Ode to Joy! The minimum size instrument for this breakthrough teaching book is an 80 bass piano accordion.

Customer Reviews:

product not available.......2005-08-30

I ordered this product and was informed a few days later that the item was not available.

The book to learn from.......2004-07-11

Gary Dahl has written an excellent instructional book with easy to learn lessons. The book starts with basic fingering and note reading. Simple traditional folk songs are introduced and the student rapidly progresses to alternating basses finishing with Ode To Joy. There is a CD that comes with the book allowing the student to play along.

Dust off the old accordion and pick up this book. A rewarding challenge!

Average customer rating:
FIRST FIVE LESSONS FOR PIANO ACCORDION
CLARKE FORTNER
Manufacturer: CHICAO MUSICAL INSTRUMEN CO
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Sheet music
ASIN: B000N4HZNI

Product Description

AN ELEMENTARY COURSE EMPLOYING AN ORIGINAL AND MODERN GRAPHIC METHOD DESIGNED TO TEAC GEGINNERS HOW TO PLAY IN FIVE EASY LESSONS

Customer Reviews:

My first greatest disappointment!.......2000-04-02

This book is a waste of money. Very disappointing!

i need info.......1999-08-19

Hello, if anybody knows how I can contact Karen Dubinsky please Email me at Dubenskij@hotmail.com Her surname is a derivationof my own, I am desperately looking for members of my wider family to help me find out more about the family before they were expelled from Russia in the early part of this centuary. I am deeply interested as my Great Grandparents died when my grandfather was young and he lost contact with the other family members.

The Second Greatest Disappointment: Honeymooning and Tourism at Niagara Falls. (Book Reviews / Comptes Rendus). (book review): An article from: Resources for Feminist Research

Average customer rating:

The Second Greatest Disappointment: Honeymooning and Tourism at Niagara Falls. (Book Reviews / Comptes Rendus). (book review): An article from: Resources for Feminist Research
Catherine Kellogg
Manufacturer: O.I.S.E.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Resources for Feminist Research, published by O.I.S.E. on March 22, 2001. The length of the article is 953 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: The Second Greatest Disappointment: Honeymooning and Tourism at Niagara Falls. (Book Reviews / Comptes Rendus). (book review)
Author: Catherine Kellogg
Publication: Resources for Feminist Research (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 2001
Publisher: O.I.S.E.
Volume: 28 Issue: 3-4 Page: 200(3)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Customer Reviews:

A Baby-boomers Treasure Trove of Memories.......2004-06-06

On the back cover of the book, the author asks if the reader can identify no less than forty theme songs of television shows from over the past five decades. Only five escaped my memory. Thus, my "musical quotient", a term coined by the author, is pretty high.

In a time when the "hummable" and recognizable theme song seems to be a thing of the past, with only a few on-air shows today possessing them, this book is an excellent reflection of the theme as well as the accompanying scores and the musicians that composed them. Names like Morton Stevens, Gil Melle', Billy Goldenberg, Bruce Boughton, as well as film composers that occasionally dabbled in television (Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, Franz Waxman, and Alex North) abound in the fact-filled book.

Divided into ten chapters, including a foreword and afterward, the book also has a list of "suggested listenings" wherein the reader can obtain recordings of respective themes and scores.

As I said in the title, the book is a delight for those of us with fond memories of the music of the "boob tube".

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Hi, Yo, Silver!
The Birth of TV Music

2. Crime to a Beat
Cop and Detective Shows

3. Head 'Em Up! Move 'Em Out!
The Westerns

4. You Are Traveling Through Another Dimension
Fantasy and Sci-Fi

5. Man, Woman, Birth, Death, Infinity
Drama

6. Just Sit Right Back and You'll Hear a Tale
The Sitcoms

7. Your Mission, Should You Decide to Accept It
Action-Adventure

8. You Are There
Documentaries and News Programming

9. Flintstones! Meet the Flintstones
Cartoons in Prime Time

10. My Name is Kunta Kinte
Made-for-TV Movies and Miniseries

Afterward

Sources

Suggested Listening

Index

Comprehensive, fun, and extremely well researched.......1998-04-02

If you like music and/or television you will enjoy this book. A tremendous amount of research went into "TV's Greatest Hits" and it pays off for the reader with information available nowhere else. Both the educated musician and the casual fan will enjoy this book. The entire history of television music is covered, not just the well known "hits".

Tv's Biggest Hits: The Story of Television Themes from "Dragnet" to "Friends

Average customer rating:

Tv's Biggest Hits: The Story of Television Themes from "Dragnet" to "Friends
Jon Burlingame
Manufacturer: Schirmer Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000O96K4C

Book Description

Imagine being able to add a luscious mane of long, flowing hair to your Maya-created action heroine--and then being able to braid it, curl it, and style it to your heat's desire. With Maya 6 and this task-based guide, you can do that and a lot more on the way to creating ever more sophisticated 3D worlds with Alias' newly updated modeling and animation software. In this eagerly anticipated update to everybody's favorite Maya tome, best-selling author Danny Riddell uses a combination of task-based instruction and strong visual aids to take you step by step through all of today's Maya's essentials: Character animation and setup, polygonal modeling, dynamic interaction with Windows, and more. Whether you're a beginning user who wants a thorough introduction to the topic or a more advanced user looking for a convenient reference, you'll find what you need here--in straightforward language and through readily accessible examples, peppered with tons of timesaving tips and tricks.

Customer Reviews:

good.......2007-05-15

Good book, needed to learn in class. Maya is a very vast program, many books will be needed for tutorials.

A Great Buy.......2006-03-04

This book is awesome. I would recommend this book to anybody who has ever looked at Maya and felt overwhelm by all the menus and features. This book gives you information about the tools and menus and some uses of the tools in plain English with plenty of black and white visuals.

I am a novice with Maya and this book is a godsend. I've tried those "learn by following me" books but I would get lost along the way and most of the time I am just mindlessly clicking on stuff. Visual QuickStart Guide for Maya 6 sympathizes with the complete newbie by clearly explaining how things work and in some cases which method is more appropiate. Plus,it is cheaper than the Official Learning Maya books.

Note: This Book is a reference so don't expect to learn how to model a character by reading this book. However it is still helpful if you are doing one of those "follow me" tutorials or taking a class and you just need something to fill in the blanks or explain the tools.

boring and dry.......2005-12-02

i felt this book was really boring and uninformative. it was required for a class, and i bought a new one, becasue it just didnt describe things in an engaging manner.

Great Book!.......2005-03-14

This is a great book. You cannot beat the clear and to the point explanations of Maya's features. I really wish the writers would create individual books on Poly modeling and NURBS modeling.

Easy reading and full of useful info.......2005-03-06

I've used visual quickstarts books to get up to speed quickly on HTML, Photoshop, and CorelDRAW and they've always been a good investment. The Maya 6 visual quickstart follows this pattern. Unlike most Maya books, the quickstart series is not project based, which is one of it's strengths. The book focuses on the interface, tools, and options, which in the long run makes it great reference book. With a project book, you really need to be sitting at the program to make sense of it. With quickstart you can read it pretty much anywhere and gain useful knowledge. Project base books are great, but make sure you have a copy of these book handy for more explanation on tools and options.
Since this works as a reference book, it has a much longer shelf life, since you can always come back to it to refresh your memory or look up a question.

Average customer rating:

Rise and fall of nations

Compellingly Clear Foundation for Avoiding Global Collapse

Best Meta-History Book Ever Written

Thought Provoking - With the depth of Guns, Germs and Steel

A compelling framework for pre-capitalist historical dynamics

War and Peace and War: The Life Cycles of Imperial Nations
Peter Turchin
Manufacturer: Pi Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Military | History | Subjects | Books
General | World | History | Subjects | Books
Military Science | History | Subjects | Books
General | Science | Subjects | Books
All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Science | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Historical Dynamics: Why States Rise and Fall (Princeton Studies in Complexity)

The Collapse of Complex Societies (New Studies in Archaeology)

Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization

ASIN: 0131499963

Book Description

Like Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel, Peter Turchin in War and Peace and War uses his expertise in evolutionary biology to make a highly original argument about the rise and fall of empires.

Turchin argues that the key to the formation of an empire is a societyÂ's capacity for collective action. He demonstrates that high levels of cooperation are found where people have to band together to fight off a common enemy, and that this kind of cooperation led to the formation of the Roman and Russian empires, and the United States. But as empires grow, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, conflict replaces cooperation, and dissolution inevitably follows. Eloquently argued and rich with historical examples, War and Peace and War offers a bold new theory about the course of world history.

Customer Reviews:

Rise and fall of nations.......2007-09-28

This is a great book that explains the rise and fall of empires. It gives a good explanation of why empires develop the ability to expand and rule and why they lose it. If you love history and try to make sense out of it you will love this book. Great book that in light those who read it.

Compellingly Clear Foundation for Avoiding Global Collapse.......2007-09-03

I bought this book at the same time that I bought The Collapse of Complex Societies (New Studies in Archaeology), and it is one of several that will be the foundation for my own forthcoming work, "WAR(-) & PEACE(+): Open=Wealth=Peace.

Other books vital to my perspecitve that complement this one:
The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State
The Vulnerability of Empire (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs)
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance (American Empire Project)

It is on the basis of having read and reviewewd those books first, that I find a deep appreciation for what this author has done. I've struggled with the book for a couple of months, because this is not light reading. This is deep history, a form of historical dynamics of "science" that is called Cleodynamics. This is such a tough nut to crack that I am going to write my review in reverse order.

1) The author ends with E pluribus unum. Cooperation is essential to the long-term prosperity of man. To this I would add my own motto, E Veritate Potens--We the People are made powerful through truth.

2) The author ends on a hopeful note, suggesting that it is possible to design institutiions (I would say, networks) that can foster cooperation and distribute wealth (I would say, create new wealth). There is a remarkable coincidence between this author's sociological views, and two books in particular, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks) and The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom.

3) The author attributes the current clashes of civilization with the4 energizing of the Islamic endges where they confront the West (Israel is included in that bloc), Orthodox, Hindu, and Sinic civilizations. I know from other readings that these edges also suffer from water scarcity, and the greatest crime that Israel is committing against the Arab nations is the covert theft of their water through very long underground pipes that violate political borders.

4) Growing inequality, growing debt, brings down empires. The author paraphrases Toynbee in saying "Great empories dies not by murder but by suicide." Quite right. We've killed 3,000 of our own and created 75,000 amputtees while murdering hundreds of thousands because our The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead was all too willing to "go along" with massive blatant lies, and all too complacent to exercise our civic responsibilities to participate in the dialog.

The failure of our generals and admirals to confront illegal orders from Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz--the failure particularly to challenge their many lies to Congress and the public--got us into perfect position for total collapse. The 27 secessionist movement are most likely to gain their objectives cause the "empire" is deeply enmeshed in a far-away war it cannot win, a war that continues to hollow out our Armed Forces at the same time that it accelerates our loss of legitimacy in the eyes of the rest of the world.

The decline of collective capabilities for action, "asabaya" that this author discusses match up very well with the observations of the author of the book first cited above, to wit, when the empire can no longer make coherent affordable sustainable decisions, the empire implodes, defaulting one or two levels down.

Throughout the book there is a tension between "the landscape of fear" and the possibilities of hope. One thing history cannot tell us, although the author explores this as best he can, is how the wealth of networks could unleash the entrepreneurial energy of the five billion poor, to the point that we achieve the title of Medard Gabel's superb forthcoming book, "Seven Billion Billionaires." Self-governance, tr5ansparent budgets that destroy corruption, self-correcting localized resilience and networks that eliminate waste and over-production, these all appear to be on the horizon.

Having been in Viet-Nam from 1963-1967, and being an avid reader of books on the intelligence failures and leadership lies of that era, I find a remarkable coincidence between the asibaya of Islam and the asibaya of Viet-Nam, and the manner in which mendacious leaders and incompetent or timid intelligence professionals conspire to waste blood, treasure, and spirit in a self-deating manner (less the elites that enrich themselves through war profiteering).

I have a note, this may be the first 21st Century social science reference (published in 2006)

Early on in the work the author focuses on the religous controversies that plagued the Roman Empire, and we reeview the critical role of religion as a symbolic market, a divider for many, a uniter for some. It was a glue for Russia, it is neutral for Malaysia and Indonesia, and fraught with peril for Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and even Turkey.

Early on the author focuses on how fragmentation blockes collective action and leads to defeat in detail. He emphasizes the importance of social cohesion while noting that climate and ecological boundaries matter. So doesthe truth. I was much impressed by The Blue Death: Disease, Disaster, and the Water We Drink and The Republican War on Science as well as Tempting Faith and I am quite certain that history will find this current Administration to have been the most villanous, traitorous, spendthrift, and corrupt in our entire history of just over two centuriues. What stuns me is how our culture has become so insensitive, our civic nature so watered down, that the people are like pigs waiting for slaughter.

The book opens with a central observation, that political boundaries work only when they coincide with cultural rights. Absolutely vital point, one reason why I concur with Philip Alott's observations, and one reason I believe we need to overturn the Treaty of WEestphalia and start over with a combination of culturally valid boundaries and regional networks for managing water, eneergy, food, shelter, and security.

The author begin with a discussion of three central concepts:

1) Meta-ethnic frontier theory and asabaya cycles

2) Demographic-structural secular cycles; and

3) Fathers and sons cycles.

The author uses and discusses mathematical models in support of the work, but does not burden the reader with the formulas.

From this and the many other books I have been privileged to review these past six years of infamy, I share the author's hopeful conclusion. It is now possible to demonstrate to people that

1) There are not enough guns to kill us all

2) We can liberate the poor by connecting them to free knowledge one cell phone call at a time (with millions of volunteers using telelanguage.com to offer micro-tutorials on anything in any language);

3) We can demand trasparent budgets published a week prior to voting, and thus eliminate all the secret earmarks and corruption;

4) We can apply millions of eyeballs to all trade records and stop corporate looting of poor countries via corruption

5) We can throw out corporate personality, implement localized home rule, and demand localized resilience in water and energy and food.

On balance, as appalled as I am about the treachery and venality of the Cheney White House, I can but Praise God for sending this dark cloud to shock America back into reading non-fiction and thinking for itself.

I have three sons, and helping the poor is going to be my way of protecting the future of my children and their children. Earth is an aquariaqm. We have 5-10 years to balance it, or we are toast. Corruption, not global warming, is the gravest threat to humanity.

Best Meta-History Book Ever Written.......2007-05-14

Poor Arnold Toynbee identified a few patterns, but his woeful explanations totally ignored many things, technological change being foremost. But now we have "War and Peace and War"!

Peter Turchin's superb book explains what keeps empires, nations, and even tribes together and allows them to be more than just transitory collections of random people sharing a culture. Extremely well written, the book illustrates its thesis at every turn with compelling historical examples and occasionally amusing biographical details. But the stress is on asabiya (accent on the second syllable, I think), and its fundamental importance for a group's very survival (though his data really allows him to press the case only for "empires"). The concept is related to "social capital" and also to Fukuyama's "trust", but fully warrants the use of Ibn Khaldun's own special term.

Finally someone has drawn together the real threads of explanation of the typical cyclic behavior of pre-modern nations. Though he does in the last chapter apply his findings to the post-1800 world, he acknowledges that things have changed and the traditional patterns apply less now.

Altogether a totally engrossing and very important book, written in such a manner that makes it hard to put down.

Thought Provoking - With the depth of Guns, Germs and Steel.......2006-02-21

It is a socially accepted idea that a common enemy unites. It's common sense to us, but the facts of how pervasively a common enemy can cause a nation to unify has never been laid out clearer in any book I have read.

Turchin presents many cases of different people bonding together and energized by an unsettled frontier or a frontier under seige. Empires such as Rome, France and the Carolingians and the Holy Roman Empire are prime examples of nations who rose by being surrounded by enemies. These nations were forced into action for their own survival. Turchin does a fine job of backing up his theory with detailed accounts of the rise of these empires. Turchin uses the Arabic term "asibaya", a term that roughly means "unity and cooperation" to describe nations that had unified.

The second part of the book deals mostly with the fall of empires. Many of these empires fell - interestingly enough - because of the common bond breaking down internally. Turchin attributes much of this to class divisiveness, i.e., the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer and the eventual collapse of the upper class as a result, as they could no longer live off of the poor. This resulted in not only the poor revolting, but also the upper class battling with each other.

For the most part this is a well written book, however the author tends to jump around a bit from chapter to chapter, which at times makes the book hard to follow. This is a minor price to pay, however for a book this well researched and informative. I'll chalk up any disorganization in the book to his inexperience in writing history books of this scope.

Turchin treats the pre-capitalist dynamics in much the same way that Marx does. In fact, Turchin refers to Marx in numerous places. Say what you want about Marx, but he had a clear understanding of how people and classes of people interact.

One obvious mistake in his writings, though - He attributes Voltaire's famous quote about the Holy Roman Empire ("It wasn't holy, it wasn't roman and it wasn't an empire") to Marx, which is indeed incorrect.

A compelling framework for pre-capitalist historical dynamics.......2005-11-12

Alex Alaniz's otherwise excellent review fails to mention Turchin's core concept of 'asabiya' (Chapter 4). First developed by the fourteenth century thinker, Ibn Khaldun, asabiya broadly connotes social solidarity. Similar, more narrowly-based concepts include social capital (Robert Putnam) and the idea of military fighting spirit as a force multiplier.

Turchin puts asabiya at the heart of his historical dynamics, from asabiya's forging in initially fractious tribal groupings, chronically stressed at the edge of existing empires, through to the empire-building power of egalitarian high-asabiya groups, through to the decline of empire as class-stratification erodes social bonds in the empire's decadent period.

Turchin traces an 'asabiya gradient' in the United States, from high in the north to low in the south, which he associates with the corrosive legacy of slavery. Steven Pinker's 'Blank Slate' made similar remarks about the lower social solidarity in the US South, although Pinker saw this as resulting from the Southern 'honour culture' which, as he saw it, had resulted from the pastoral, rather than farming background of the earliest colonists. Pastoralists have to treat others as potential enemies since their mobile assets (e.g. cattle) are so easy to steal - a reason for low asabiya.

It would be interesting to know whether Turchin's more technical books have developed mathematical models/simulations of inter-society dynamics in which asabiya is a key parameter.

Although Turchin's many examples and models have been drawn from pre-capitalist agrarian societies, the fundamental concepts seem eminently applicable to contemporary events (Turchin chances a few asides, but not a systematic framework). I would guess that what we're seeing here are the opening movements of an exciting, insightful and controversial research programme to come.

War And Peace And War : The Life Cycle of Imperial Nations

Average customer rating:

War And Peace And War : The Life Cycle of Imperial Nations
Peter Turchin
Manufacturer: Pi Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OI56DY

Product Description

Dogs of different breeds can range remarkably in size, shape, and behavior, and yet they all carry essentially the same genome, making them a particularly fascinating model for genome plasticity. The recent release of the complete sequence of the dog genome provides an exciting new context in which to consider such variation. Twentyfive chapters written by experts in the field include various aspects of morphological and behavioral variation in dogs, their origins and domestication, and their unique value as a model system for many common but complex human diseases such as diabetes and cancer.

Average customer rating:

DOG AND ITS GENOME, THE
OSTRANDER
Manufacturer: NY
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000N5DEIC

Book Description

Under imminent threat from habitat destruction, the northern Cordillera Vilcabamba in the Andes is one of Peru's biologically richest areas. This report presents the results of two recent ecological surveys of this little-known region.

Investigating both high and low elevation sites, the surveys discovered several species new to science. For instance, nearly a third of all the butterfly and moth species studied were previously unknown, and a large arboreal rodent species collected may even represent a new genus. This report also provides critical recommendations for effective conservation in the Vilcabamba, as well as a detailed anthropological assessment of resource use by local communities.

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books