It is a good book for both new and experienced researcher in biosciences. Reading this book had exposed me to many areas and important findings related to biotechnology. And had been the first reference for me when I faced many difficult problems.

An excellent book to collect.

After 55 years of intense and rabid anti-communism, most people can be excused for accepting the old cliches about American Communists: dour, unfeeling and fanatical in their devotion to Moscow's orders. This joint autobiography of Agnes (Sis) Cunningham and Gordon Frieson shows us that, instead, Communists tended to be pretty much like all of us. Driven by a desire to create a better America and repelled by the "everything's for sale" attitude of the two main political parties, they labored through poverty, blacklisting, lynch mobs and government sabotage towards that better America. And they did it all with a song on their lips and in their hearts. An excellent book for those who want to know more about a period when only the very brave questioned the government and the system we live under.

In this, the first serious, comprehensive, and scholarly booklength history of the American folk revival (or at least one of them; one can argue that a kind of folk revival is occurring right now), Ronald D. Cohen draws on years of research to document a fascinating cultural moment. If you're interested in the subject, you will definitely want this book, and you will be grateful for its wealth of information. Even those of us who have followed the folk revival for a long time will learn a great deal. I expect to return to the book again and again in search of facts not readily, or at all, available elsewhere.

This, however, is not the sort of revisionist history that one day somebody will write. That becomes apparent on the dedication page, where Cohen honors "Pete Seeger, who has sustained me over the last five decades." If, like me and the counter-hagiographical historians certain to write the next draft of revival history, you consider Seeger something of a sanctimonious hypocrite, you may find Cohen a trifle irksome. On the other hand, you'll find validation in Seeger quotes that Cohen innocently drops, such as an astounding statement about Josef Stalin on page 30. Made in 1993 -- 40 years after the death of a tyrant who killed more people, including Communists, than any other figure in history (between 20 and 40 million, according to best estimates) -- Seeger, a lifelong, self-identified Communist, finally manages what at first looks like a critical assessment, even an apology for his years of service to a spectacularly unworthy cause. On second and further readings, however, Seeger's meaning grows ever murkier and finally takes on positively Orwellian dimensions. For all his public persona as a radical liberal, whatever personal virtues he undoubtedly possesses notwithstanding, Seeger is in his ideological heart radically illiberal. Nothing in this book will convince any attentive reader otherwise.

Cohen himself has nothing unfavorable to say about the Old Left/Popular Front culture that saw traditional music as a useful agitprop tool and proceeded to purge it of all "unprogressive" elements, fashioning a crude caricature of the real stuff. To Cohen the enemies are the anti-Communists -- he appears to make no distinction between liberal anti-Stalinists and demagogic reactionaries like Joe McCarthy and his ilk -- and phrases such as "dark clouds of anticommunism" hover over the text.

He rightly condemns the abominable, anti-democratic practice of blacklisting, which sidelined, for a time, the careers of Seeger and the Weavers. Such victimization, however, does not make them heroes, only victims; in Stalin's Soviet Union dissident balladeers and writers went to the gulag, often never to be seen again. In America in the meantime, after the unpleasantness had passed, Seeger et al. went back to well-paying careers. All the while, they managed to compose not a single protest song about the fate of their counterparts in the unfree nations of the Soviet empire. The Seegerites, after all, were members of that generation of ideologues who, in George Orwell's wry observation, were opposed to fascism but not to totalitarianism. Even their opposition to fascism, however, was conditional. When Stalin and Hitler formed the alliance that started World War II and ended only when Hitler later turned on the USSR, Seeger and his fellow Almanac Singers were unrestrained in their opposition to American intervention against German/Soviet aggression. The conflict in Europe, their songs informed us, came about because of the sinister machinations of greedy British capitalists (the theme of the Almanacs' jaw-dropping rewrite of the traditional "Liza Jane") and therefore Britain's fate was of no concern to decent people. After Hitler attacked Stalin, of course, nobody supported intervention more fervently than these putative pacifists.

The early folk revival was at its core a political movement, and Cohen's is in good part a political book. That affects his treatment of the music, about which he utters scarcely a discouraging word. But it needs to be said that, with the exception of the magnificently gifted Woody Guthrie, the Stalinists produced a vast body of very bad music. Seeger and the Weavers trafficked in a preposterously sentimentalized portrayal not only of Soviet dictators but of ordinary Americans, prominently including union members. As a liberal Democrat who grew up in a union family, I used to entertain fantasies about banjo-smashing whenever I'd hear Seeger burbling another patronizing ditty about the workers' struggle. Seeger, the Weavers, and their comrades seemed to infantilize everything they touched. And yet....

For all their moral and musical failings, they alerted their fellow citizens to our country's (and others') rich heritage of traditional song. They played a large and honorable role in the discovery (in some cases rediscovery) of authentic rural folk artists -- no one more so than folklorist and Marxist Alan Lomax, who alone or, in his youth, with his father John Lomax found Lead Belly and Mississippi Fred McDowell, among many others, and gave them stages and careers. They started folk-music recording labels (most prominently Folkways) which afforded both rural and urban performers a voice and a new audience. Most of the urban music from those days is forgettable, some of it downright cringe-inducing, but the best of it endures. Besides such talented performers as Dave Van Ronk, the Kossoy Sisters, Fred Neil, the Dillards, the New Lost City Ramblers, and Ramblin' Jack Elliott (all, with the exception of the anti-Stalinist socialist Van Ronk, at least artistically apolitical), the second stage of the revival produced one of the towering figures in American music, Bob Dylan -- about whom, oddly, Cohen has relatively little to say. Yet, in going electric at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, Dylan both revitalized folk music and freed the revival from the suffocating effects of the Stalinist culture that made it possible. Today's folk musicians are better for it, and so is their music.

Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival & American Society, 1940-1970 by Ronald D. Cohen (Professor of History, Indiana University Northwest) is a remarkably informative historical survey and commentary of the phenomena of folk music's mass audience appeal as represented by concerts and album sales from such luminaries as Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary, Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, The Kingston Trio, The Weavers, and scores of others. Originally centered in New York's Greenwich Village and sustained by a robust record industry, this revival of folk music through the 1950s and culminating in the mid-1960s when it was overtaken by "The British Invasion" and the dominence of Rock 'n Roll. Still, those glory years of folk music popularity have left an astonishing musical legacy that still reverberates within the American culture. Rainbow Quest is a seminal, core addition to any 20th Century American Music History reference collection and supplemental reading list.

Any book that prompts such a lopsided anti-"Seegerite" rant must be worth reading. Pete Seeger himself would be the first to admit that he is far from perfect. Yet it is very difficult for anyone with an iota of commonsense to see him as anything other than profoundly liberal in the best sense of the world, and as the sort of figure Americans can truly be proud of.
I would have been inclined to book on the basis of Ronald Cohen's dedication alone, but I happen also to be familiar with the quality of his scholarship. Given the subject, it is possible to recommend the book without reservation - even as I place my own order.

We will never see these lovely posters on the hoardings in Chicagoland or Northwestern Indiana, but this wonderful book does as much as is possible to capture the glory of that long-gone, pre-Depression advertising age. The articles are interesting to railway aficianados and help to put the artworks in their proper context, but the crowning glories of the book are the full-page reproductions of all the known surviving South Shore Line posters. Yes, it was a simpler time; and No, the artists were not on the forefront and fringes of experimentation. But the posters do not pretend to be anything other than what they are--railway advertising--and they are superb examples of that, comparing favorably with the contemporaneous works of the Big Four in Britain, who were themselves experiencing a Golden Age at the time. Now if only someone would do for North Shore Line posters what this book does for the Chicago, South Shore and South Bend Railway! Buy two copies: one for the shelf, and one to cannibalize for prints to frame. (I know, I know, the thought of cutting up a book was anathema to me at first, but the results were spectacular.)

"Moonlight in Duneland" is a wonderfully subtle exploration of a marriage between the golden age of advertising and twilight of passenger rail service in suburban Chicago and northwest Indiana.

The Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad has served the region for about ninety years, but in the 1920s the once floundering commuter train became a sudden success due to the advertising campaign commissioned by new owner Samuel Insull.

Intending to create a ridership for the line, the ad campaign showed sophisticated Chicagoans what wonderful scenery and activities waited for them a short ride east in Indiana. The lithographs reprinted on the pages of "Moonlight in Duneland" are wonderfully rendered in the style of such illustrators as Maxfield Parrish and the Prairie Deco artists of the day. Each poster illustrates one of the many activities in different seasons. One could see Notre Dame football in the fall; relax on the Lake Michigan beaches in the summer; or snow ski on the Dunes in winter. The pages are mainly full page reprints of the photos with just enough text in the front of the book for explanation.

This book is very well made and the prints are very well reproduced. I recommend it to anyone, but fans of Art Deco design and railroad enthusiasts will enjoy it.

A must-have coffee table book for anyone connected to N.W. Indiana. Living history in a medium long past.

As a mental health therapist, I use this book for one of my groups for Borderline Personality Disorder. The exercises in the book are excellent, and the Group members are able to relate to the book and each other. Excellent book!

I am amazed at the amount of information this book provides. Unlike other books on borderline personality disorder, this book has treatment aspect of the disorder. I think other books on the same subject had more descriptions of how bad the disorder is and don't even mention any treatment.

After reading only the first chapter I knew it was for me. I could feel the feelings of Samuel like it was me he was writing about. I always knew I was diagnosised borderline but never knew what it meant, except for seeing things black and white. I never knew where the feelings came from. This book as helped me to understand myself and where my feelings came from. NOW I can truely begin to work on my recovery.

Excellent book on multithreading. I like the way the thread library was built into the learning process. Maybe it was not appropriate but I would have liked to see something on RPC threads also. Another O'Reilly kudo.

This is the first O'Reilly book I've ever read that I cannot wholeheartedly recommend.

The introduction to the book states the it is aimed at the novice. However, the examples in the book contain several novice mistakes. The book also glosses over a few point that an experienced MT programmer would understand, but would be baffling to a novice. I also found a few Win32 mistakes such as their handling of redirection of standard in, out, and error.

If you know MT and Win32, it's probably a good book. If you don't keep looking.

Here's what I liked about the book:

(1) It provides simple explanation of central concepts and issues around multithreaded programming. This knowledge is platform independent.

(2) Provides clear explanation of Win32 specific API and Kernel Objects, knowledge that is necessary to do Multithreaded Programming on most Microsoft Platforms.

(3) Builds a simple C++ based OO Wrapper class Library for Multithreaded programming that elegantly conceals Win32 APIs idiosyncrasies.

(4) Also builds additional higher Level OO Abstractions (like Monitors) that Win32 does not need to support directly but Programmers need often.

(5) Great illustrations of Multithreading problems, solutions and Patterns through the trailing part of the book.

(6) Code and Diagrams abound.

What's there not to like?

I have got and appreciated very much the 2nd edition of this excellent work. I think it's the most complete and clear textbook of hematology. I hope that this revised and updated edition will confirm its fame of beeing worldwide the "true bible" for the hematologist!

Let's be honest here. The people represented in these essays were there when the whole revival movement was getting underway. They grunted and sweated and, without them, the music might not be where it is today. I'm sure these guys would be great to share a pitcher with in some dark pub, hearing firsthand some of their stories. It was probably even an interesting series of lectures back in 1991, when the words carried the personality of the people talking. But this book ... frankly, it's perilously close to boring. While it may be an invaluable scholarly resource for someone researching particulars of the folk movement, it can make for dull recreational reading.