This was an excellent book which was full of previously unknown information. I was particularly surprised to find information pertaining to genetics and skin color. There is so much that most people probably never knew about this culture that is revealed.

This book has lots of good information for doing research and other projects. An inspiring book of history.

Beautiful book, very detailed, lets you know the connection!

I enjoyed the book; it was entertaining, insightful, scholarly, and included a few insightful surprises! However, I was most disappointed to note the biographical omission of Mr. Simmie Knox; he is too talented and humble a person to be overlooked in such a fashion. So, for the sake of posterity, the book should be recalled and corrected as soon as possible. Surely, we wouldn't want it said this is the way we regard an African American Presidential Artist! Correction please.

Great book. Very useful for new collectors.

What a beautiful explanation of art that has been ignored for so many years. Not only is the book well illustrated, it is informative. Not having much understanding of art at all, I have now begun to understand the artist, the art and the expression of information that is creative and informative of people and events. This is a book not only for the scholar and informed art collector but for those of us who enjoy beauty. We can now understand creativity in a new way.

This is I think is first book I ever read by a Black Panther Party member. Most certaintly, the BPP was extremely controversial and weighted down with informants, provocateurs, and sell-outs. But Hillard wasn't one of them. He seems to give an honest account of his involvement in the Party. His story will give you great respect for a group of brothers and sisters who dared to take a stand against White supremacy, police brutality, and other forms of injustices. His is an inspiring story.

David Hillard and Lewis Cole's This Side Of Glory (1-55652-384-X, $18.95) provides the autobiography of Hillard and his involvement with the Black Panther Party. The Party's history, focus, and events are revealed in this eyewitness account. Essential to any comprehensive ethnic issues collection.

This book is very interesting. Hilliard follows the idea of self-criticism throughout this book, leaving the reader with a very broad view of the Panthers. He seems to exclude nothing, he shows the promblems and the triumphs of this grand party. All power to the people finally came to mean something to me, instead of being some "crazy sixties thing." This should be read by all revolutionaries trying to start an organization and people questioning their government.

A good little dictionary giving you comprehensive information about Weston, often orchestral instruments. Information includes instrumental devices, ranges and what within music that instrument is best suited. However, the writers do warn it is in pocket-dictionary style which means it should be used as a quick reference. They suggest studying a larger book for detailed analysis about each instrumental grouping. This book is about the instruments, not necessarily about how best to orchestrate particular difficulties, for example, or about collective writing... The essential dictionary of Orchestration is a pocket dictionary giving you practical, easy-to-understand advice for the beginner or the un-familiar. The illustrations clearly show how certain types of effect should be ideally written with useful illustrations depicting meaning. This is a very useful book, with a great deal of instruments (from violin to the harp, percussion to the bass flute...). It also explains the basics of MIDI. Perhaps a little over-priced - you still can't really go wrong!

While not as comprehensive as the larger texts (I would recommend Alfred Blatter's 'Instrumentation & Orchestration' and Samuel Adler's 'The Study of Orchestration'), this is a great quick reference book, with information on instrumental range, timbral characteristics, dynamic contour and other useful facts. This book is ideal for composers/arrangers on the move and at the excellent price is a must for music students.

I figured, gee it's just a few bucks, what the heck.

Well, this is one book which doesn't look to spend much time on the shelf. It's not exhaustive (it tends to be focused on the basic european instruments so includes e.g., violins, brass and guitars, but omits the cuatro, ney, sitar, etc.) but seems to be error-free. It won't necessarily obviate occasional discussions of capabilities of the instrument with a player, but is quite handy nevertheless. This is exactly the book that I wish I had twenty years ago.

This is a great book to read if you want to know what it was like to work for The Pullman Co. The biggest problem with the book is that it is virtually one-sided. Mr. Perata doesn't seem to include the positive side of The Pullman Co., nor has he included the historical perspective of the times and attitudes of the general populace during the period he explores.

I had two close friends who worked for Pullman. One was a black former Pullman Porter. The other was a white Pullman employee who had worked his way up the system from the entry jobs to conductor and finallly a Pullman General Manager. Far from having the "plantation mentality" Mr. Perata speaks of, his concerns were that the level of service did not diminish AND that the employees were being treated fairly and with respect.

The black person worked for me in an executive compacity, so he need not have been less than candid. He told me stories of both his positive and negative experiences. Of course, there was the occassional ornery Conductor or supervisor, but almost all his comments about Pullman were positive. In fact he was insistant that the traditions of The Pullman Company be carried on and used on Amtrak.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I started reading this book, but quickly became caught up in the stories and work experiences of these men. Many people don't know what train travel was like in the days before Amtrak and this will be an eye-opening book for them. For those of us who do recall Pullman travel, and the people (many of them friends) who worked the cars, this book will bring back meny memories. Readers should be aware that that this collection of oral histories is not a railfan's book or a wallow in nostalgia. These men tell what it was like not only to work for the Pullman Company, but also what life was like for them away from the trains. Parts of the book are funny, and others are heartbreaking, but most work is that way. The only thing that kept the book from receiving a "10" rating was that it could have used some car diagrams (floor plans) to give the novice an idea of the interior layout of the cars described in the text.

The interviews of the men that built such a style of travel are conducted and written in such brilliance that you can almost smell the starch in their white jackets! A brilliant method of capturing the true life emotions of an almost invisibale servant who afforded the rail traveler a luxury that this country will never again know. Mr. Perata has imortalized those fine men in print, a much needed documentation of a bygone mode of travel and the truth behind it. Those Pullman Blues should be on every bookshelf in America

James E. Coleman, Jr., writing in the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review, Vol. 6, No. 1, 1999 notes: "Whether Leeming is as successful in taking on an artist's life as he had been with the literary life of [James] Baldwin, I am not certain. His knowledge of Baldwin's literary world is not quite matched by his savvy of the art world of the same period. Nevertheless, we have a fine introduction to an artist whose reputation is growing and who lived a fascinating life." That's high praise coming from Coleman, editor of The Encyclopedia Homophilica.

America's artistic milieu is known for dismissing from its memory those artists whose works and lives are deemed trivial and not worthy of consideration. Such an attitude has denied younger generations of artists the experience of knowing some of the great artistic man and women of our time. Beauford Delaney was one of those artists relegated to the halls of obscurity.

Amazing Grace is David Leemings biographical piece that examines Delaney's life and contributions to the art world. He looks at the forces which brought forth America's premiere modernist artist and shows how his gift impacted on the way one views life and art.

Who is this man, Delaney? A superficial view of his life reveals him as an impoverished homosexual Black artist who is plagued by many demons as he struggles to find himself as an artist and at peace with his sexuality. James Baldwin called him his spiritual father who was a cross between Brer Rabbit and St. Francis of Asissi. Others knew him as the good negro or an eccentric gadfly. Whatever one may call him, Delaney's goal was to infuse the concept of love within his work that would bring him the wholeness that he failed to capture in his life.

Plagued by paranoia, alcoholism and guilt over his homosexuality, Delaney failed to achieve intimacy in his relationships but poured out his inner struggle through his art. Like many artists, he went through several stages of development in his career which reached its climax in France. Unfortunately the demon of paranoia stripped him of his artistic ability in his later years.

This book must be read to get a handle on the artistic struggles of African Americans and how they succeeded inspite of their alienation from the mainstream art world. Delaney also struggled with being homosexual which undoubtably alienated him from his family and Black colleagues. His struggle opens up a new chapter in examining how sexuality impacts on a minority artists life. Delaney was saved from obscurity through this view of his life. Whether he was saved by grace is a moot point for his demonic voices did him in.

Quite enjoyable collection - the final story in the collection is so gripping that it takes hold and stays with you long after you finish reading Jauss's work.

"Glossolalia" is one of the best short stories of the last 30 years. Jauss is a writer of importance; read this book!

It seems odd that Lewis's biography of W. E. B. DuBois should be felt to be entitled to two Pulitzer prizes. The author disapproves at least on the surface of some of DuBois's more outrageous positions, but yet Lewis's biases show thru, and one gets the idea that in general if Lewis had not had the benefit of what has happened in regard to Communism in the past 15 years Lewis would be even more approving of DuBois's opinions than he now indicates. As others have mentioned, it is disconcerting to have a book from a major publisher have so many typographical errors. One would think they could have been easily avoided. And the endnotes are a nightmare. Instead of footnotes there are page notes in the back, with no discernible system: some indicate sources, but I found them very user-unfriendly. There is no bibliography as such, and overall I thought the book poorly edited. But the book tells a story of interest, especially during the period from 1945 to 1963.

I agree with Schmerguls, above, that David Levering Lewis' vol. II of DuBois has too many typographical errors; the endnotes are a nightmare; and that it needs a bibliography. But the book is more than a flawed book about a flawed man. It is readable, in general; Lewis could have skipped some of the big words in favor of words that ordinary readers could understand without a dictionary simultaneously open. Lewis uses colorful, precise verbs in many cases and succeeds in bringing characters to life in one word descriptions. He humanizes DuBois by discussing his friendships and by examples (through verbs and description ) of DuBois's autocratic manner. If this biography does not deserve a Pulitzer, I am curious what biography Schmerguls would consider worthy? The Oakland reviewer, above, is more on the mark in that this is a thoroughly researched and keenly insightful recounting of the life of a towering figure. I, too, sorely miss a bibliography. And the last quarter of the book is indeed full of typographical errors which a careful copy editor should have caught. One hopes that there will be a revision someday with all corrections made. Still, this is a wonderful history of the times and of an amazing (though "flawed," like the rest of us) figure in American history. DuBois certainly provoked solid thought at a time when mainstream America was unsure that Negroes could think. I have heard David Levering Lewis speak on C-Span. He writes better than he speaks because he says "Uh-uh" too much as he searches for those big words. But I'm so grateful that his work on DuBois came to fruition in my lifetime so that I could read it.

With volume two Lewis completes his magisterial work chronicling the life and times of the controversial W. E. B. Du Bois, and this second volume is every bit as fascinating and scholarly as the first one which won the Pulitzer Prize. This volume follows Du Bois' descent from a founder and spokesman for the NAACP to his self-imposed exile in Ghana in 1963. Throughout the journey Lewis thoroughly develops the changing viewpoints Du Bois put forth as solutions to the problems of racial discrimination and the powerlessness of people of color in this country and around the world. From an integrationist (who at the same time criticized the assimilationist attitude of Frederick Douglas), Du Bois moved into the Pan-Africa movement (although he disliked and opposed Marcus Garvey and his movement), and eventually supported Black separatism before settling on socialism and Marxism in the later years of his life. His "petty bourgeois" ideas concerning Black economic separatism were, of course, vehemently criticized by his Marxist friends. Many believed "Du Bois was a romantic, a racialist, and an old man given to dreams of a 'shopkeepers paradise' as a solution to the depression."

Although Lewis soft-pedals Du Bois' deep character flaws which caused him to be constantly at odds with others who were "on his side" in the fight for racial equality, and permitted him to excuse the murder and outrages of Stalinism and the Japanese military aggression and ethnic cleansing in Asia, the author clearly reveals these facts of Du Bois' life. Lewis reveals how Du Bois' mind became so poisoned with a visceral hatred of White power, and its adjunct Western capitalism, that he eventually reached the point where he could look the other way or excuse the outrages committed by peoples or regimes opposed to Western interests (which he never seemed to quite grasp were really his own interests and those of the Negro in America). In the end Du Bois seemed opposed to almost any policy his country adopted and he supported any force in the world (be it Pan-Africanism, Bolshevism, Japanese militarism, or Chinese communism) that opposed the interests of the "White governments." Thus, did a brilliant social critic end up a confused mind destined to play the role of a pawn for regimes opposed to Western interests.

Lewis is very good at highlighting Du Bois' conflict with Marcus Garvey of whom he draws a great character sketch. He points out that Garvey's early followers were often poor, less educated, and often of West Indian origins, while the more "elitist" Du Bois circulated among, and pretended to speak for, the Talented Tenth of the African American people. Du Bois was an elitist and intellectual who could not stomach the irrational pronouncements of Marcus Garvey. Du Bois' viewpoint was that of the Black urban, educated, professional.

Lewis is also very strong with detail concerning Du Bois' widening differences with the NAACP leadership and the association's approach to fighting for equality. Du Bois was not a great fan of Walter White, Roy Wilkins, and Thurgood Marshall who, with their legalistic approach, stressed working within the "White system." As in volume one, Lewis does a good job of discussing Du Bois' many writings and shows how Du Bois himself (as witnessed by his "The Gift of Black Folks") never outgrew his own racial stereotyping. Lewis also soft-pedals Du Bois' many affairs with intellectual women, but he does document these relationships. He shows how Du Bois, a believer in the rights of women, virtually abandoned his wife Nina over a period of many years in almost every sense but financial (many of his friends and intellectual acquanitances never met his wife) and how he was less than a father to his unfortunate daughter Yolande (who was one of the great disappointments of his life.)

Lewis' book is possibly most fascinating when he deals with the Harlem Renaissance and the various figures with whom Du Bois was familiar. He details Du Bois' eventual alienation from the creative people of this era who depicted the seediness of Black urban life and culture. This too realistic depiction of Black life by the Renaissance literary figures embarrassed and angered Du Bois who wanted to believe that the "Negro race" was destined for a special place in history and, as a race, manifest certain elements of racial superiority. Du Bois criticized the Harlem Renaissance writers, poets, and artists for not sharing his belief that art and culture should serve racial politics. As Lewis shows, "Du Bois's own deep anti-modernist taboos surfaced" in his criticism of the Renaissance literati. Lewis also spends a good deal of time on the historiography of the Reconstruction Era to enable his reader to grasp the importance of Du Bois' writings on the subject and how they served as a necessary correction (despite Du Bois' own one-sidedness and exaggerated claims) to the more traditional school of historical writing on the Reconstruction Era. He also reveals the extent to which Du Bois would never give up the ridiculous notion that the freed slaves saved democracy in America. He desperatly needed to find a special role for the African American in the history of the the great country. Despite Du Bois' brilliant intellect, it was his tendency to see "White" hatred of the Negro as the central paradigm of all modern history, that prevented him from being widely accepted as a scholar. For him, all historical understanding began with this simple fact. Often his own worst enemy, Du Bois, Lewis tells us, "managed to give the impression that racial discrimination had been invented soley to make his life miserable."

In the end, Du Bois felt the American Negro had let him down and he lost his faith in the special role the Negro was to play in history. As he himself admitted, "I misinterpreted the age in which I lived." One has to think that this disillusionment played as much a role in his decision to leave the country as any other reason. All in all, Lewis' biography portrays Du Bois as not so much a heroic figure, as a tragic one; a brilliant mind warped by a troubled soul that was the reflection of much of the pain experienced by an educated African American in the first half of the twentieth century.

The publisher says that this book is appropriate for grade 6-12. I disagree. While I feel the book is well written and informative - I strongly suggest that educators think twice before putting the book in an elementary school library.
Perhaps have it available in case an advanced 6th grader has a need for detailed information regarding the topics.
My 9 year old - 4th grade son brought the book home from school yesterday. While AIDS is an important subject for him to learn about - I do not feel that the details of specific high-risk sexual contact needs to be available to him at his age.
I feel the book would be more appropriate for grades 9-12.

This book was fun to read and it was really easy to get a book report out of.

We read this book in class and it is an excellent source of information as well as interesting, and offers all points of view on each "plague" as well as the facts. Covers a lot on the little known parts, and victims of AIDS, and a short kind of Bio on Ryan White.

Black helps make the nuances of syntax easier to understand with this concise book. Chapters are well ordered and written in such a way that makes it clear to the reader with some Greek background the true meaning of Greek texts. This book even helped me with English grammar. Well worth the buy.

Great for an intermediate text book on NT Greek.

David Black has a relaxed style and uses some terrible puns, all of which goes to making a complex subject easier to learn.

He covers topics in sufficient depth - and avoids getting bogged down in detail. Every category is backed up with examples from the Greek NT, which is very useful.

I found the chapters on infinitives and participles and clauses especially helpful and worthwhile.

Black's book makes Greek easier for the struggling student. It explains the whys and wherefores of Greek in detail. It not only defines terms, but it gives examples from Scripture, so that the student can know how these grammatical functions work in the text.