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Book reviews for "Athanassiadis,_Nikos" sorted by average review score:

The Study of Instinct
Published in Hardcover by Clarendon Pr (November, 1989)
Authors: Nikolaas Tinbergen and Niko Tinbergen
Amazon base price: $30.00
Average review score:

Important
This is an incredibly important book. It is a clear and systemetic discussion of the beginnings of ethology by one of its founders. Too bad it is out of print. I really hope the publisher makes it available via print on demand technology so I can have a private copy.


Thames and Hudson Dictionary of Art and Artists
Published in Paperback by Thames & Hudson (February, 1988)
Authors: Nikos Stangos and Herbert E. Read
Amazon base price: $12.95
Average review score:

This is a must-read for anyone who is interested in art!
International and up-to-date, this extensively illustrated and copiously cross-referenced dictionary covers over 2500 artists, paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, schools and movements, including essential information on contemporary art and artists, not available elsewhere, and on techniques, materials, terms, and writers who have influenced artists. This indispensable source book has now been extensively revised, supplemented and updated with over 200 new entries.


To Kretiko machairi = The Cretan dagger
Published in Unknown Binding by Klassikes Ekdoseis ()
Author: Nikos Vasilatos
Amazon base price: $
Average review score:

The Cretan dagger Book Review
The book "The Cretan Dagger" by Nikos Vassilatos is an excelant reference book for those that are interested in learning the history of this quite rare to find dagger. The books gives information on the various types of Cretan daggers that one could encounter. Additionaly there are excelent quality color pictures of famous Cretan daggers that are located in museums in Greece. The book text is both in English and Greek language.


World Agriculture: Towards 2010: An Fao Study
Published in Paperback by John Wiley & Sons (May, 1995)
Authors: Nikos Alexandratos and Food and Agriculture Organization of the
Amazon base price: $270.00
Average review score:

Reviews from profession Journals
"The book really is a tour de force. In spite of its price, it should be held at least by every decent agricultural library in the world, and many practicing agriculturalists (who can afford the financial pain)will quite properly want to have their own copy. ....... It is literally a treasure of information that will usefully inform debate on the big issues of global food and fiber commodity outlook, and global natural resource issues linked to agriculture."

Jock R. Anderson, The World Bank (in American Journal of Agricultural Economics, February 1996).

"I would like to emphasize that this is an exceptionally important book. It belongs on every reference list in courses on agricultural development. Any effort that attempts to confront the issue of future food and population balance that ignores the work of Alexandratos and his colleagues can not be regarded as serious." Vernon W. Ruttan, University of Minnesota, (in Population and Development Review, 1996).


ZORBA THE GREEK
Published in Paperback by Scribner Paperback Fiction (December, 1996)
Author: Nikos Kazantzakis
Amazon base price: $10.40
List price: $13.00 (that's 20% off!)
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Life Affirming and a Big WAAAHOOOOO!!!!!!
Zorba, the ever loveable Greek, one cannot help but love and wish they themselves more closely resembled. At least i do. Nikos Kazantzakis, strongly influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche--parallels are all over in the text--wrote this novel all about living in the moment and finding happiness in the present. The main character finds himself troubled and confused, strongly "puritan" and "western" in his moral code. And, upon encountering Zorba the Greek, a spontaneous, life-affirming passionate man, learns to love life and find happiness.

Zorba is a complete womanizer, loves his food, song, and drink. Zorba believes he is destined for "hell" not for any sin--not for killing, or swindling, lying, or cheating--but Zorba believes he is bound for the eternal flame because one night earlier in his life, a woman waited for him in her bed and he did not go. Some of my favorite quotes in all of literature lie in this novel.

Zorba teaches the main character, and the reader along with him, to live life in the moment and never to pass up a moment. The book is a great, infectiously life affirming tale. The book will not only entertain you through its pages, but change how you see the world.

I've been more spontaneous ever since.

Wonder and tragedy: our short and beautiful time on earth
In approximately 1914, before World War I, the narrator, a young cerebral writer who wants to become rooted in the earth and physical labor, rents a lignite mine on the beautiful island of Crete. As he is about to depart, he meets a much older, experienced, and very earthy Alexis Zorba, whom he hires to be his foreman and cook. What he learns, and we through him, may change your life. First, a warning: to appreciate this amazing book, one must be able to look past the misogyny and sexism of life on Crete in 1914, and focus on the love and relationship of two men. Zorba plays the santuri, has had a family and many lovers, has fought in the Balkan Wars, has lived and loved-his knowledge is rooted in love, suffering, sweat, and blood. He is a simple but deep man who lives life without shame, bares himself, has no guile or guise, and lives every moment fully--not only his joy, but his tears, his compassion, his anger, his hunger, his thoughts and his questions. His character is perceptively portrayed by the first person narrator who is a contemplative who gradually comes to see the poverty of a life always filtered through philosophical, religious, or cultural judgments. He immediately appreciates Zorba's wonder at life, Zorba's music and dance, and the way Zorba sees the same old things every day as if new. Zorba is life itself, a fleeting moment with a discrete beginning and final end. The narrator especially learns that by holding on to his safety and security he has sacrificed much by failing to live to the fullest like Zorba. The book is absolutely beautifully written, makes you cry at the beauty and wonder of being alive, makes you ache for loved ones who are gone, and cry at our ultimate fate, death, in the face of which we must live with ever more Zorba-like zest.

Tragedy and beauty: our short time on earth
In approximately 1914, before World War I, the narrator, a young cerebral writer who wants to become rooted in the earth and physical labor, rents a lignite mine on the beautiful island of Crete. As he is about to depart, he meets a much older, experienced, and very earthy Alexis Zorba, whom he hires to be his foreman and cook. What he learns, and we through him, may change your life. First, a warning: to appreciate this amazing book, one must be able to look past the misogyny and sexism of life on Crete in 1914, and focus on the love and relationship of two men. Zorba plays the santuri, has had a family and many lovers, has fought in the Balkan Wars, has lived and loved-his knowledge is rooted in love, suffering, sweat, and blood. He is a simple but deep man who lives life without shame, bares himself, has no guile or guise, and lives every moment fully--not only his joy, but his tears, his compassion, his anger, his hunger, his thoughts and his questions. His character is perceptively portrayed by the first person narrator who is a contemplative who gradually comes to see the poverty of a life always filtered through philosophical, religious, or cultural judgments. He immediately appreciates Zorba's wonder at life, Zorba's music and dance, and the way Zorba sees the same old things every day as if new. Zorba is life itself, a fleeting moment with a discrete beginning and final end. The narrator especially learns that by holding on to his safety and security he has sacrificed much by failing to live to the fullest like Zorba. The book is absolutely beautifully written, makes you cry at the beauty and wonder of being alive, makes you ache for loved ones who are gone, and cry at our ultimate fate, death, in the face of which we must live with ever more Zorba-like zest.


That's the Way I See It
Published in Hardcover by Chronicle Books (November, 1993)
Authors: David Hockney and Nikos Stangos
Amazon base price: $40.00
Average review score:

Authorative, comprehensive, nice-looking
Hockney is one of the contemporary artists that helped us most to love colours in the house. He must be considered not only as a painter but as a decorator. His houses (including swimming pools...) are artistic masterpieces as well as his paintings. This big book is full of facts. Unfortunately, Hockney did not dare to do the same exercise as Christian Lacroix in its own autobiography. Is he too old, now? Was he tired when he made this book? David, do it again (publish a new edition) with some more energy. While waiting for this future edition, buy both books: Christian Lacroix "Pieces of a pattern" and David Hockney. These two "kings of happiness" will bring joy and happiness to the house.

A Real Beauty !
I have been a fan of David Hockney's for many many years and was delighted to find this book. He writes in an understated, easy way about his art and about modern art in general.

Two of the sections were particularly interesting: "Art versus the Art World" and "The Power of Art".

In the book, Hockney explained how places and his personal experiences have influenced his art over the years. He talks about how he is incorporating photography into his work and feels that it is an artist's responsibility to be open to new forms of expression. He says he is an "artist who is always working". I think he is always experimenting too, with different methods of expressing his artistic vision.

He said he asssumes that if he is interested in painting something, others will be interested as well. I loved this viewpoint....in other words, he creates for himself.

This was a lovely book---especially all of the GORGEOUS color reproductions which traced the Hockney's evolution and his journeys.

Now I see it ----- differently!
This is an interesting book because it explains the discovery of ways of seeing, and in the process of explaining alters the way the reader sees art.

The challenge of pop art or abstract art is that to the uninitiated it seems gimmicky, and one often goes 'you've got to be kidding?' But with this wonderful exploration of the different ways that art and photography are ways of capturing a point of view, not a reproduction of a point of view. And more importantly, how Mr. Hockney comes to these expressions of point of view you get a glimpse of not only an interpretation of art, but the process of art. I love words and the essays are as magnificent as his art in their clarity and honesty. The section on his photo montages are amazing.


Arming Iraq: How the U.S. and Britain Secretly Built Saddam's War Machine (Northeastern Series in Transnational Crime)
Published in Hardcover by Northeastern University Press (December, 1996)
Authors: Mark Phythian and Nikos Passas
Amazon base price: $35.00
Average review score:

A detailed and convincing expose of Western arms sales.
Mark Phythian is an international authority on the arms trade. In 'Arming Iraq' he produces a cogent critique of the policy that led to the arming of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship - a dictatorship already notorious for its gross violations of human rights. He also uncovers the devious methods which the arms suppliers used to beat official sanctions against the regime and the connivance of governments that had introduced sanctions in the first place.The British Conservative Government in particular emerges discreditably from this account. Indeed the reverberations of this unsavoury episode continue and help to explain the atmosphere of 'sleaze' which brought about its electoral downfall in 1997.Anyone interested in the arms trade and the problem of democratic accountability would be well advised to read this meticulously researched monograph

EXELLENT BOOK.
I JUST HOPED THAT THEIR WAS A WAY TO CONVINCE AND TEACH THE ORDENARY PEOPLE OF WHAT GOES ON IN THIS WORLD,UNFORTUNATLY MOST PEOPLE ARE SO NAIVE AND STUPID THAT THEY ONLY BELIEVE IN WHAT THEY SEE OR HERE THROUGH THE MEDIA AND SPECIALY WHEN THEY LISTEN TO THEIR LEADERS,THESE IDIOTS TRULEY BELIEVE IN THEM AND NOT REALISING WHO THE REAL CRIMINALS ARE,BUT YET AGAIN I GUESS TO BE A REAL CRIMINAL POLETICION,THE MIDDLE EAST OR IRAQ IS NOT THE PLACE TO APPLY FOR THIS JOB IT IS INFACT THE WESTERN COUNTRIES,SUCH AS THE U.S.A.,GREAT BRITAIN,AND THE REMAINING POPETS.


The fratricides
Published in Unknown Binding by ()
Author: Nikos Kazantzakis
Amazon base price: $
Average review score:

only one pot of basil in the whole village
Perhaps the least well known of Kazantzakis' bleak beautiful epics, The Fratracides is as in-depth examination of the effects of oppression as I have discovered. The book is set in a mountain village in Greece during the Turkish occupation. While on the surface it is about a revolutionary faction and it's resistance to the occupation and the villager's resistance, and occasionally support, of that faction, the book also operates on several, more intriguing levels. It examines the different human responses to domination as clearly as any sociology book, but with characters, words, and images that worm their way around your head in a way no textbook ever could. The fatalism of the of the literally hungry violence-sick villagers, the power-hungry priest grabbing at straws, the zeal of the revolutionary leader, the sensual despair of the town Magdalene; the characters manage to function symbols of human reactions as well as fully dimensional people. Kazantzakis is the master of the life of the world vs. the life of faith dilemna and that dynamic most certainly plays out in this work, though in a different way than in most of his other writings. It is not just one person struggling with the meaning of faith, but a whole community embodying the various aspects of that particular drama. The Fratracides is, I would say, the hardest of Kazantzakis' fictional writings in the sense that he gives the reader very little to hope for. But, when you stop to think about it, how appropriate. Occupation and violence are not necessarily situations in which hope is a facile option. The writing is solid; Kazantzakis has the profound ability to distill human experience emotion into dense stones that pave the villages and hills where the action takes place. The Fratricides is unique in it's ability to be spiritual without being dogmatic, analytical without being dry, and thouroughly beautiful both in story and writing.

Village Life, Oppression, Struggle for Life
The life in the village revolves around the seasons, with accurate and colorful detail one senses the natural flow of "the way it should be" however there is an ominous "presence" that threatens the natural order of things ... The main characters are Father Yanaros and Captain Drakos, and the supporting cast includes, Leonidas the student, Hadjis the well-traveled one, Kyriakos, and Dimos an elderly peasant, Panagos (the barber), Kosmas, Stratis. Levi and a variety of others who feel like real people.. The struggle for freedom and the need to sustain life during oppression and occupation is intensified and illuminated. The resolution of social problems and role of religion and the church in balancing the good and evil in society is the main theme. The battle of the spirit against human frailties is Kazantzakis' constant theme ... he excels in this area. This novel exemplifies the dynamic powers of description and characterization that has won Kazantzakis world-wide acclaim. Highly recommend this book to those who want to understand the constant battle to live in the midst of oppression. Erika B.


The Last Temptation of Christ
Published in Hardcover by Simon & Schuster (December, 1960)
Author: Nikos Kazantzakis
Amazon base price: $14.95
Average review score:

4.5 - An excellent fictional account on the life of Jesus
The Last Temptation of Christ is a fictional exploration of the life of one of history's most intriguing figures, Jesus Christ. This is not revisionist history, merely an author's viewpoint on how the Son of the Carpenter may have lived his life. It should be taken as a novel, and not a reinterpretation of the scriptures.

Nikos Kazantzakis presents Jesus as very human, a man struggling to ignore the voice of God while making the crosses that the Romans use for crucifiction execution. The people around him think he is mad, and at first the story is frustrating as the reader wants the character to show some guts and follow his destiny. Of course, what a destiny this turned out to be. How many of us could have done what he was purported to have done? That is the question, and as Jesus accepts that he is the Messiah, the story really gets moving.

This is not an easy read, both in its prose and its ideas. There is a lot here to challenge people from all religious backgrounds. Jesus is shown as a human, with human emotions and frailties, but it is this that makes for an interesting character arc in the presenation of the novel and the creation of a truly dynamic character.

Kazantzakis also provides beautiful description of the land of Jesus' birth and places we've read about in the Bible and heard of in the news. Nazareth, Judea, Galilee, Samaria and Jerusalem come alive in these pages, full of Jews, Romans, Pharisees, Scribes and ragamuffins.

The character of Judas Iscariot is also interesting, a militant religious zealot who wants the Romans out of Israel. In this story, he is the one follower that remains completely true to Jesus, and must accept the most difficult task given to him by Jesus. The other apostles are shown as weak and ready to desert Jesus at the earliest threat of danger to their lives.

A challenging aspect of this book is the visions, and one is never quite sure if what a character is seeing is real, imagined or a vision from God. A lot of strange things happen, and sections are full of Biblical symbolism so you might need to read sections twice or consult with the Gospels for clarity.
The scenes dealing with Satan are particularly bizarre, especially the period where Jesus is fasting in the desert.

Another interesting character is Mary Magdelene, a prostitute that scorns Jesus, then becomes one of his most ardent followers. She figures in the last temptation, but more important are the sisters of Lazarus, Martha and Mary. As Christ ascends the Cross, he experiences this last temptation and there is an interesting twist on temptations. To me, this section was not nearly so blasphemous as "religious" folks have made it out to be. They probably didn't actually read the book.

Here are a couple of my favorite passages:

"What are dreams, Rabbi?" she asked him softly. "What are they made of? Who sends them?"
"They are neither angels nor devils," Jesus answered her. "When Lucifer started his revolt against God, dreams could not make up their minds which side to take. They remained between devils and angels, and God hurled them down into the inferno of sleep..."

Another

"A prophet is the one who, when everyone else despairs, hopes. And when everyone else hopes, he despairs. You'll ask me why. It's because he has mastered the Great Secret: that the Wheel turns."

The only major problem I had with the writing was that there was a lot of point of view shifting within scenes, so it sometimes became confusing whose head we were in during the scene. One minute we're with Jesus, the next with John, then Peter, and so on. I don't mind multiple points of view, but I prefer to stay with one character throughout the duration of a scene.

I thoroughly recommend this book to anyone who wants to examine their beliefs from an alternate point of view other than the one taught by organized religion.

The Last Temptation eh...?
Banned by the Catholic church, excommunicated by the Greek Orthodox and labelled as 'blasphemous filth' is unusual praise for perhaps the most important book of the 20th Century and it's author. Very rarely is a book so lovingly constructed by the author, Nikos Kazantzakis doesn't just transport the reader back in time to follow Christ on his journey, but allows us to enter his own mind, and follow his own spiritual and mental voyage. Never before has a book left me breathless after the introduction alone, however, by the time this book has passed you by, you will either want to read it again, or it has already changed your life forever. The wonderful depiction of Christ is possibly the most accurate that there has ever been, ever will be, he is a man, a man who finds God, not a God who finds man. I pronounced this the most important book of the 20th century, and in a society as ruthless as today, man needs to think once in a while about the issues here; God, life, the spirit, himself. I have found no better source of information and reference for my own life and I can guarantee that you will be prompted to write your own review once you have finally put the book to one side.

A Thing of Beauty
As a person who studies the New Testament very often and in great depth I can wholeheartedly say to all those who are seeking for the historical Jesus that this is definitely not him. Yet I can also say that those who wrote the New Testament would have fully endorsed the spirit of this great book. With a vividness of imagery and harsh truth Nikos Kazantzakis paints the story of a man that could be God if only he had courage enough. This Jesus embodies the hope and salvation of mankind in an entirely novel way, in his weakness, fear, and doubt. the poetry of language in english is beatiful, I imagine in the original Greek it is breathtaking. It's a true shame that many Christians object so strenuously to this book for I'm certain that the more devoutly Christian one is the more he or she will feel the emotional impact of this book.

To be as succinct as possible; this book is beautiful, brilliant, and inspired. It contains the depth of passion that truly befits the love that so many people hold for Jesus.


The Saviors of God: Spiritual Exercises.
Published in Hardcover by Simon & Schuster (March, 1969)
Authors: Nikos Kazantzakis, Kimor Friar, and Kimon Friar
Amazon base price: $10.00

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