American Palestine: Melville, Twain, and the Holy Land Mania is a strong and insightful study that sheds light on an important geographic-cultural landscape that shapes American culture. By focusing on the ideological construction of late Nineteenth-century Palestine in the American imagination, Obenzinger shows that this imagination contains much more than meets the eye of those who only look at the domestic spaces of Melville and Twain. Both writers traveled to Palestine, and the texts they produced about these experiences have been deeply and intimately related to their perceptions of, and contributions to, U.S. national culture, which has been obsessed, as the book so persuasively shows, with images and beliefs about "the Holy Land." Obenzinger writes beautifully about Melville's melancholic and Twain's humorous treatment of Palestine and its significance for U.S. culture.

This, i.e., American Popular Music by Mark W. Booth , is truely a one of a kind bibliography on popular american music. In here one will find bibiliographical sources, general reference, bibliography and history, sociology amd techology to mention a few. The introduction is very well written and is not the least stuffy or boring. Highly Recommended.

Americas is an excellent teaching tool when the goal is to make Latin America understandable to students who have been subjected to Anglo-Saxon centrism most of their student lives. This anthology of primary works helps the students to see Latin America as a multi-dimensional place with history and complexity. The book is very readable and I would recommend it for undergraduate students who do not have much previous knowledge of Latin America.

We live in an age inured to change and intoxicated with novelty. Evidence of the past is carelessly tossed away all around us, and few make any effort to dredge it back up later.

Thus it is fascinating -- and curiously reassuring -- when anyone stumbles on some long-lost relic or other, and manages to extract from it a few precious clues regarding what man may once have been or where he may have come from. T.V. has bored most of us stiff with endlessly repeated news about King Tut and his celebrated tomb. Obviously some must still be convinced that the barely preserved corpse and outrageously overstuffed grave of an ancient youngster -- however marginal historically -- can still yield valuable information of some kind.

Considered for a brief time at least somewhat newsworthy was the recent announcement that a cache of birch-bark manuscripts containing ancient Buddhist texts was discovered (though no one seems to know exactly where, when or how). The news media is no longer much interested in the find, but scholars certainly continue to be -- and for reasons at least as compelling as those which attract us to Tut and his excess of playthings.

These manuscripts are believed to be the oldest Buddhist documents in existence, and perhaps the earliest Indian Documents as well. I am in no position to appreciate the significance of this for the study of Indian history or literature. However there can be little doubt that the find is extremely important to an understanding of what Buddhism may once have been -- and how it became what we now think it is.

Don't hold your breath waiting to find out about these manuscripts from a T.V. special, as you did perhaps with the Shroud of Turin or the Dead Sea Scrolls. The manuscripts are too dilapidated to show up well in color, and it is easier to make out the freckles on King Tut's mummified visage than the archaic writing on some of these two-thousand-year-old documents.

But the scholarly promise of the Gandharan Texts is potentially immense, and in its way every bit as profound as the richest tomb ever excavated. Therefore Richard Salomon's elegant book, Ancient Buddhist Scrolls from Gandhara, is well worth consideration.

Saloman, a scholar of immensely lofty standards, still manages to produce a book whose narrative is readable and informative, and whose pictures are interesting (if, to a layperson, somewhat redundant). Naturally it is the ancient texts themselves which fascinate, and this book is intended only to introduce their probable history and document the process of their translation. Therefore only tantalizing excerpts from them are included in it. Susequent volumes willl present their contents more fully.

Many readers will approach this book searching only for the sights, smells and textures of so-called original Buddhism, hoping that this early source might have survived unpolluted by the later political, cultural or doctrinal prejudices characterizing modern Buddhism. Inevitably, others will be looking for evidence to resolve long-standing questions regarding doctrinal superiority or primacy of one school or denomination over another.

Though the texts are quite beautiful and possess ample literary and spiritual merit independent of any denominational puzzles on which they may shed light, the doctrinaire reader is not likely to be disappointed. I find Solomon to have a slight anti-Theravadan bias. However he still concedes,

Although it would be premature at this point to draw detailed conclusions about the doctrinal positions of the tradition represented by the [birch-bark] fragments, it is worth mentioning that the preliminary studies carried out to date reveal no clear traces of Mahayana ideas or tendencies...Of course, closer analyses of individual texts...might bring to light material that would require modification of this statement, but on the whole it appears that the manuscripts come from a time and place in which Mahayana ideas had not come into play at all, or at least were not being reflected in scholastic texts...[F]urther analysis and possible future discoveries could well change the picture, but as matters stand at this point, the[se]...scrolls do not offer any support for the hypothesis of a relatively early origin for Mahayana Buddhism.

For many of us, observations of this sort alone are more than worth the price of Solomon's book. However be assured that it also contains an abundance of valuable and intriguing information about early Buddhism and Indian history and society in general. The texts which it reports and details are also likely to furnish us the most objective insight we will ever get into the nature and sociology of the place and time in which Buddhism was conceived and first flourished.

if youre into punk, then this books for you. with incredible photos of the damned,the sex pistols,the clash,the jam and so many other early punk bands.it talks about the bands, the music, the style of dress,the attitude, and of course, the fans.this book is packed with pictures of the bands onstage and backstage and has some cool photos of the fans just getting crazy and hangig out.but really its just something pretty cool to have if you want to know what actually went on with the punk scene in tne mid 70's...if you weren't already there.

And Then Mark Died: Letters of Grief, Love and Faith is a collection of poignant letters written to various confidantes five years after Ms Vogel lost her adult son in a car accident. In reliving the horror of her loss, Ms Vogel lays herself bare and, in doing so, helps others who have experienced sudden, violent loss to heal. Ms Vogel's beautifully-phrased writing evokes sympathy, empathy and even sometimes amusement, as she describes her journey through nearly indescribeable pain to calm acceptance and understanding of her loss. This slim book will take any reader, bereaved or not, to a higher plane of self-awareness and maturity.

I love this book. Although it is rated for ages 9-12, I am a graduate of an Ivy League school and I find that it quickly refreshes as well as adds to my (already good) knowledge of world history.

Its point of view is commendable: the author writes as if he were an extra-terrestrial just visiting Planet Earth, thus can write about all peoples--American, Europeans, Hispanics, Polynesians, Africans, Japanese, Chinese, Asian Tigers--in a neutral but interested and caring way, for his people out there in the stars to read.

He touts the amazing achievements of several peoples but also pokes fun at their faults and confusions in a breezy but not overblown style. He tells us of nationalism and the rise and fall of individual empires and nations including their feats, truths and dreams as well as their lies, illusions, and exaggerations. Even Science is shown as a rising God that blesses us with favors but also punishes us with headaches.

The book is illustrated in full color, comic-book style, and peppered with delightful stories in virtually every page. It is a good first book or refresher for anyone wishing to start, or again get going at, delving deeper into world history, from the Big Bang several billion years ago to the present. The readers ends up both appreciative and skeptical of humanity, in short with the truth.

I noticed a couple of typos at the end of the book, but they are minor blemishes in a truly excellent book of about 120 pages.

A great reader on some "unbelievable" sounding physical phenomena, with a focus on quantum mechanics. It's quite intellectually satisfying to see the "bizarre" micro-level physics behind what we regard as everyday macro-level phenomena.

Some math/science experience is probably a prudent prerequisite for appreciating this book, but it is certainly not necessary to be a physicist (nor even to know calculus) to understand most of the ideas presented here. It is maybe half a notch more technical than the average quantum mechanics article in Scientific American. It is certainly nowhere near the technical level of a physics journal article, nor even a college physics textbook.

The work of the Andersons is truly inspiring. The idea of a great designer being also a great craftsman seems, lately, to be an extinct , if not rare occurance in architecture, and relegated to "artists". The Andersons demonstrate that Design-Build, when done right, is exciting and innovative. They take such seemingly mundane issues as pre-fabricated homes, construction specifications and documents and introduce the idea that anything can be re-thought to be stimulating.

When I was growing up, Mario Andretti was one of my heroes. When you put Jim Clark and Mario Andretti on the same racetrack, I was in heaven. This book is the ideal coffee-table book about the greatest race car driver of the 20th century but you may want to put your copy in a cabinet like I do (so that it doesn't get damaged). The readers of "Racer" Magazine voted Mario the best. The photography in this book is fantastic, even the older black and whites are clear. If you like racing especially the "good-old-days", then you will love this book.