this book is a surprisingly accessible work on the lives of five important artists (duchamp, cage, tinguely, rauschenberg, and cunningham) of the avant-garde, each working from a different discipline. tomkins has gathered exhaustive biographical data on each artist and the reader gets the impression that he is good friends with each of them. his critical stance on the artwork discussed is respectful, and he refrains from using a lot of artworld jargon. a very entertaining read.

This was a great book for the Mr.T fanatic like myself, I liked it because it allowed me to establish a grester knowedge of one of my life time heros. The book was very descriptive and interesting, however I found it was somewhat one sided and lacked some of the backgroud I was eager to discover.

Batchelor's major work of Cold War fiction floored me the first few times through. His gift to tear into the other side of the U.S/S.U. rivalry, showing both the very worst of Soviet repression and the kind of searing love-of-life felt by characters once they escape the watchful Soviet eye, is possessed by very few. Never feeling like a Soviet apologist or a "Raa raa, horray for our side" jingoistic US enthusiast, Batchelors work touches on Orwell's but never feels simply derivitive or hollow. He is a challenging, intense and unique writer and anyone who falls at the feet of Tom Robbins or loves the work of Don Delillo would do good to tackle Batchelor's writing, both this novel and the very wonderful, "Birth of the People's Republic of Antartica." Enjoy.

This books is a tremendous introduction to the polemics of the Reformation. Sadoleto challenges the new "heresies" of the church, resting on the history of Catholic dogma. Calvin, with humor and theological insight, responds.

I read the first several chapters of this book and found the author didn't have a grasp of the Calvin's basic theological teachings which plainly contradicted some of Bouwsma thoughts. I do not question his historical expertise, but i doubt very serriously that he knew John Calvin In his book he called Calvin a pagan and anybody who knows Calvin knows he was a man of God. He also took a passage from the Institutes that Calvin was addressing the Catholic church and applied it to Calvin to support his claim that Calvin was anxious. I tried three times to get something out of this book and failed all three times. I appreciate Calvin too much to keep this book in my library.Also I crossed referenced some of his notes he claimed he quoted Calvin from and found discrepricancies. If you want a secular oppion of who Calvin was not based on his Theological mindset, then read this book. Otherwise disreguard it.

Bouwsma's work on John Calvin is exciting and entertaining. He opens the mind of Calvin and conveys an image of his thought that is incomparable when contrasted with the immense and lengthy volumes you find in other works. I found this book to be clear, concise,and authoritative. Bouwsma places his focus on Calvin's thought rather than his life, and gives a more in-depth understanding of the man whose doctrines and aspirations changed the modern world.

This is one of the finest academic historical biographies to have appeared in the past couple of decades, and will provide nearly anyone with an insightful and in depth introduction to one of the most important figures of the early modern age. It must be stressed, however, that Bouwsma will not please everyone. He is a professional historian, and not a theologian nor an apologist. Many hardcore Calvinists might not enjoy the style with which he deals with his subject matter or his theologically neutral stance in discussing Calvin's work and thought. But most students of theology and all students of history will discover in this a study of Calvin that not only discusses his thought, but relates it to the particular period of history in which it was produced. Too many Calvinist treatments of Calvin discuss him in almost ahistorical fashion, as if his thought were developed in a vacuum. As Bouwsma demonstrates, however, the was very much the product of the Late Renaissance as much as he was the Reformation.

One review below states that Bouwsma claims Calvin was a pagan. This is an important misunderstanding, the correction of which will take us to the heart of Bouwsma's central argument. Absolutely nowhere does Bouwsma assert that Calvin was a pagan, but his central argument in the book is that Calvin was deeply entrenched in renaissance humanism. The humanists went back to the pagan writers of Greece and Rome as literary models as well as alternative sources of inspiration to medieval Catholicism. As Bouwsma quite correctly points out, humanism was in no way antithetical to Protestantism. Calvin was absolutely not a pagan, nor does Bouwsma make that claim, but he did study the pagans such as Cicero and Quintillian, and modeled his writing style on them.

Many biographers delight in the smashing of myths of their subjects. While Bouwsma might not please hardcore Calvinists, in that he isn't deferential or assuming that Calvin articulated truths nearly as authoritative as those of the New Testament, he also does not try in any sense to defame or criticize Calvin. On the contrary, he goes out of his way to debunk many of the negative myths concerning Calvin. What he does try to do is provide the most accurate portrait he can of a major figure of the 16th century, both his positive and negative traits, and situation him in his time and place. In this he succeeds marvelously. This volume could stand for some time as the premiere biography of one of the two most important figures in the history of Protestantism.

Although I found this book very enjoyable, in the end it is little more than a collection of Cold War short stories, well observed but ultimately less than satisfying. The follow up novel, Walking The Cat, featuring a lot of the same characters is far more enjoyable. This book is worth reading as an introduction to that one. As regards the unavailability of this novel. I bought a brand new copy off the shelf in City Lights in San Francisco last summer after several failures in trying to get this and other Clavin Batchelor novels via the net. They had a full stock of all his works available.Maybe the old ways are still the best.

Gordon Liddy is My Muse reads like a rant turned novel by Dennis Miller. Constructed of a series of vignettes involving various aspects of cold war Americana, John Calvin Batchelor voices an opinion on anything that springs to mind, culminating in one of the most pointless yet intriguing questions of the century: Who was Deep Throat? (Not the porn star, her namesake the political luminary.)

The patriotism is apparent, yet lacks any jingoistic narcissism, as our hero "Tip" wanders first through the Soviet Union, where he shows the change from totalitarian state to frontier justice. This is a precursor of the author's later novel Peter Nevsky and the True Story of the Russian Moon Landing (1993). Having gotten the obligatory Us vs. Them out of the way, Tip moves on to Us vs. Us in the good old Us of A., except for a foray into Germany, where its Us vs. Them vs. Us, and we continue to look for Nazis. For the rest of the novel, Tip maintains a domestic traveler with visits to Houston, Ohio, Miami, Maine, Arizona, and where the cold war will play while the ticket sales last, Hollywood. Through it all, Tip maintains his cynical isolation with the ever ready sarcastic quip and side glances at the camera, while providing commentary on what he perceives as the great cold war game; "sci-fi/spy" stuff.

Using an extensive array of references, literary, historical, and political, the author manages to create a satire which still shows affection for the very things he mocks. Up until the final title section of the book, the light handed humor of our hero remains constant. It is then that Mr. Batchelor becomes somewhat preachy - providing an acceptably plausible explanation of who exposed the details of Watergate, while both building up and tearing down the character of the second most victimized participant - G. Gordon Liddy. Lest we forget, the primary victim remains Richard Nixon, the scapegoat of our age and principal martyr of our cultural disillusion. The double entendres and previous wit seemingly vanish while the author presents his explanation of the crime and its results. However, the book remains close to the target as an entertaining exploration of current social history.

Ultimately the book is well worth reading, as are any of the author's works. Mr. Batchelor is a widely underrated author who has written novels in a multitude of styles, and always with integrity. Having read all of his novels but the sequel to this novel Walking the Cat (1991), and the political thriller Father's Day (1994), they are next on my list.

"Father's Day" starts with a good premise: the tension between an elected President who has voluntarily taken a leave of absence under the disability clause of the twenty-fifth amendment, and the Vice President who has been acting as President during the disability. Two years after winning a landslide, but with his "approval rating . . . plunged to a post-Cold War low" and his marriage disintegrating, President Theodore G. Jay "collapsed with a disability diagnosed as a major depressive episode." For five months, Vice President T.E. Garland acts as President while Jay recuperates. Then Jay decides that he is rested and ready for resuming his office. But Garland, enjoying the office and its power, is reluctant about handing them back. And Garland has been accumulating quite a few friends while he has been running the country.

That premise would have made for a good, fast-paced, tense political drama. But author John Calvin Batchelor takes it too far: instead of weaving a plausible story out of politics and psychology, he opts for cheap but implausible thrills. The denouement is unsubtly foreshadowed in the first three pages, so I am giving nothing away by telling you that the first chapter opens with an unquestioningly obedient military rehearsing for an assault upon Air Force One, ending in an assassination. To Batchelor's credit, he gets the law right, and his application of the twenty-fifth amendment's provisions for a political contest between a disabled President and a Vice President acting as President is unimpeachable (no pun intended). But once the story steps outside politics and into action-adventure, reality bites the dust, and the story takes a turn so far-fetched that it ruins what may otherwise have been a good book.

No doubt about it, Batchelor did a solid job making his characters into flesh and blood people, bringing to the surface all their strengths and weaknesses. You wanted to root on one of the big heroes, Maine Governor and Presidential hopeful Jack Longfellow, but there was a taint on him due to his affair with another woman. I also liked Joint Chiefs Chairman General Sensenbrenner. He's a guy still not afraid to walk where regular foot soldiers go and has a soft spot for those in poverty, especially children. He comes off as such a stand-up guy you forget he's trying to help Vice President Shy Garland overthrow President Teddy Jay. Speaking of the Veep, I don't think he really came off as the power-hungry nut he was. One really interesting aspect of the story was the fact that while Garland is power hungry, President Jay is still battling depression and sounds like a total wet noodle throughout the book. You start to wonder who is the better guy to have in the White House. The ending, however, did leave me scratching my head in certain places.

While the premise of the book my seem unbelieveable, the very fact that the 25th Amendment makes this scenario possible makes this book very chilling. I found it to be very entertaining and very hard to put down. I highly recommend it for an political junkies looking to get lost in something other than the current events in Washington!

This book completely leaves out Calvin's fourth book, his treatment of the church. My suspicion is it was omitted because Calvin's doctrines didn't line up with those of the publisher. This ignoring of the doctrine of the church reinforces the erroneous idea that the body of Christ is insignificant when Calvin himself considered the Church our Mother.

This book completely leaves out Calvin's fourth book, his treatment of the church. My suspicion is it was omitted because Calvin's doctrines didn't line up with those of the publisher.

I bought this little book to help me teach a class on Book IV of the Institutes. But guess what? It only covers Books I-III. Book IV basically deals with Calvin's concept of the Church, so this little book will not be found too helpful if you're in the same position as me. However, the book is an excellent help on Books I-III. Very graphically oriented; it teaches just by means of its formatting! I'd like to know why the editors didn't include Book IV.

Even though the book was hard to read it contains some material(s) good for conducting an in depth binle study