Crouch continues to prove beyond any doubt to be an individual with the highest standard of literary precision. His insight into the human condition and clearness of thought are peerless in American correspndence.

Ken Mask, MD
New Orleans

american's of all ages and colors should feel indebted to Mr. Crouch for writing some of the most interesting commentary on our american cultural scene. it is because crouch understands so well the basic promise and opportunity of american life that he can weave such wide-ranging and often disparate opinion without losing touch with the reality of the culture. most importantly, crouch establishes himself as part of the great triad of negro americans - along with the novelist albert murray and trumpet virtuoso wynton marsalis who seek to recommit americans to the power and complexity of our national music: jazz. this can only be done by tossing some left hooks at our great national embarrassment: namely the nihilism and materialism of modern popular music, especially rap music. the fact that this music has been co-opted by white suburban kids shows that it has long been a bankrupt and impotent force whose only purpose is to further depress the culture for the enrichment of a few. crouch is calling on americans of all stripes to turn their back on the 'electronic judgement day' of the mass media and the self-serving race-hustlers of the academic and literary establishment and rededicate the culture to jazz and literature based on the 'tragic optimism' that has always been at the heart of jazz/blues music and american culture. count me in.

Crouch has a long history as a politically incorrect commentator on the vexed questions of race & victim politics. From what he calls "the Afrocentric hustle" to the real "race card" played in the O.J. Simpson trial; a stunning suite of essays in praise of Ralph Ellison; and how the Constitution is like the blues, I found my self in passionate agreement & furious dissent - often within the same sentence. For pure verve, style & energy Crouch is possibly the only writer who stands with Camille Paglia as a thinker who is hard to like but impossible to ignore.

..yes that Pat Burns pat@techos.com

Carol Friedman's book, The Jazz Pictures, changed my life. If it wasn't for her pictures I would have become terribly obese and died.

Picture after picture, you are inspired by Carol's constant search for "truth" in her images. The naked "truth" about these Jazz artists is captured by her awe inspiring pictures

Teenie was a true master of his craft. He captured mid-20th century Black Pittsburgh as did Matthew Brady during the Civil War. Teenie's photos do "jump off the page." Teenie's vivid images reflect his vibrant, passionate approach to life and his surroundings.

One of the best well kept secrets, and only known to the Pittsburgh area, was Charles Teenie Harris, who made photos out of one shot(hence his other nickname),worked for the Pittsburgh Courier, as well as owned his own photo studio. He photographed the famous and ordinary, rich and poor, black and white(sometimes integrated), and most events in Pittsburgh at the time(1930s-1970s). Once you open this book, you will fall in love and enjoy the photos that this man has made and appreciate his love for art. Although for the most part the photos are tasteful, there are some that are not(murder and accident scenes) and even those are not obscene as one may feel. I recommend this book to all who wish to know of Mr Harris. It is sad that he got accolades after his passing, as well as to never know that his work was returned to him, after going to court to retrieve it. Oh and one more thing, check out Stanley Crouch's biting commentary on Pittsburgh and its history at the beginning. You won't look at history that way again.

The fact that Harris is not a household name is a joke. If you are A. from Pittsburg B. an African American, C. a Human, you must own this collection. I can only say that in my mind, Harris blows away Evans and Weegee put together. An American Master

good for scientists and it's easy to study~~

This very useful book for me

This is Module 3 (of 4) in W. A. Benjamin's "Malmstadt-Enke Instrumentation for Scientists Series." I have all four, copyrighted 1973 & 1974, and they are awesome. (I'm not selling them, though!)

These books were the text used in the self-paced Instrumentation class, Chemistry 838, which I took at Michigan State University, circa 1974. It was easily the best class I ever took at MSU, and these were easily the best texts I ever used at MSU.

I was an undergraduate student in MSU's Electrical Engineering Dept. at the time, when a friend tipped me off to a graduate Instrumentation lab class taught in the Chemistry department. The purpose of the class was to teach Chemistry and Physics graduate students how to build electronic instruments for their research work.

Well, I learned MUCH more practical Electrical Engineering in that one year (three quarter) self-paced graduate Chemistry class than I learned in ALL my EE labs COMBINED! It is impossible to overstate just how much better this series was than the usual college texts of the day. (However, part of the disparity in quality between Chem 838 and my EE labs was certainly due to the fact that in 1974 MSU had a very good Chemistry department, but a truly miserable excuse for an EE department.)

The four "modules" (books) are:

1. Electronic Analog Measurements and Transducers, by Malmstadt, Enke & Crouch. ISBN 0-8053-6903-1. 203 pages pbk.

2. Control of Electrical Quantities in Instrumentation, by Malmstadt, Enke & Crouch. ISBN 0-8053-6904-X. 356 pages pbk.

3. Digital and Analog Data Conversions, by Malmstadt, Enke & Crouch. ISBN 0-8053-6905-8. 455 pages pbk.

4. Optimization of Electronic Measurements, by Malmstadt, Enke, Crouch & Horlick. ISBN 0-8053-6906-6. 203 pages pbk.

Note: I would not recommend trying to study these texts out of order.

The combined material from these 4 texts, sans experiments, was also published as a single textbook, "Electronic Measurements for Scientists." But that's out of print, too.

However, there is one book by these authors that is still in print. Their "new" (1994) book is, "Microcomputers and Electronic Instrumentation: Making the Right Connections," ISBN 0841228612. I've not read it, but I'll bet it is terrific.

27 years later, I remain grateful to Prof. Howard V. Malmstadt (U. of Illinois), Prof. Chris G. Enke (MSU), and Prof. Stanley R. Crouch (MSU), for their disproportionate contribution to my education, as authors of these books and designers of that course.

....

-Dave

Stanley Crouch is an excellent essayist, and of his books, Notes of a Hanging Judge is the best I've read so far. That being said, some of the essays in this collection still anger me, some 8 years after I first read them.

Much of his national exposure has seemingly been created by the gratuitous pot shots he takes at notable blacks, in efforts to knock them off some imagined pedestal. Two examples stand out. In the Rage of Race,(#34) one of two essays about James Baldwin, Crouch embarks on an acidic deconstruction; claiming that Baldwin's late-career work "sold out to rage, despair, self-righteousness and a will to scandalize." Crouch further wrote that Baldwin's mantle as black literary spokesman led him to neglect his craft, and eroded the impact of his subsequent work. To the contrary, there are numerous black artists, whose passion and activism did not lower the quality of their work(i.e. Paul Robeson; and Ishmael Reed-see Airing Dirty Laundry, and Writin' is Fightin). To Baldwin's credit, he defiantly refused to "sit in some ivory tower perfecting my craft" while events on the civil rights ground demanded his attention and participation. In "Nationalism of Fools(Essay #25)Crouch reduced Malcolm X to a purveyor of "a cockeyed racial vision of history which precluded any insights into human nature..." Crouch's willingness to adopt the mainstream consensus about Malcolm left him no room to study the true evolution of Malcolm's world view; it expanded beyond U.S. borders, transcended civil rights, and embraced human rights instead.

With these criticisms, you may wonder why I gave this book 5 stars. I did so because I LEARNED SO MUCH!! Crouch introduced me to people I'd never heard of, and whose work I now enjoy. The best example is("Chitlins at the Waldorf"-Essay #6) his tribute to Albert Murray, who was a contemporary of Ralph Ellison. Murray's book, Stompin the Blues, is widely regarded as the definitive text about the meaning of jazz and the blues. Because of Crouch, I now have four of Charles Johnson's books. Crouch's essay, "Another Master" profiles Senegalese film maker Ousmane Sembene, who recently had a month-long festival of his films shown at NYC's Film Forum. For all the acerbity in some essays, Crouch also shows real compassion and empathy, as his essay about Lionel Mitchell attests.

For the most part, I will never align myself politically with the conservatives with whom Crouch appears cozy. However, I will never stop reading his essays either, for they are rich, improvisational, educational and eclectic. Notes of a Hanging Judge is an intense,fascinating workout, which is at times fun. It is a truly worthwhile reading experience, and I highly recommend it!

Ingle and Crouch have done a wonderful job in putting together a true reference text. This is a must have text for analytical chemists who need to have a concise treatment of spectrochemical analysis. They have done a wonderful job in intergrating theory with practice for a wide variety of analytical techniques. This book was indespensible as a graduate student in the late 80's and still comes in handy today!

I had never read any Faulkner until I picked this off my bookshelf while browsing. Out of my wife's american literature classes has come what I feel to be one the best written books I have read in quite some time. The people are tortured, alive and very well described. The races are diagnosed in merciless precision and scrutiny, the unfortunate frustrations that plague them both. (there don't seem to be many other types of people in the stories except a few Indians) But this is art, literature the way it is supposed to be written. The language of Faulkner literally soars off the page with insight, feeling and relevance to the story. These Southern lives are mixed together, bringing forth a mulatto-rainbow mix of wonder and mystery and deep appreciation, a well developed reverence for life, its pain and people, suffering through a walk on the blessed earth. Truly great writing as compassionate as it is accurately reflecting the Southern world, post slave to this century through the eyes of a family smorgasbord of bloodlines and personalites. If you want to enjoy reading and have wondered at times why you are wasting your time on cultured pulp, this book will set you back on the right path.

Please, please do not pass over the other fine stories in GO DOWN, MOSES and go straight to "The Bear." This gem means much more when illuminated by the other parts of the text, and only by reading the entire book can you fully understand the meaning of Ike's repudiation of the McCaslin land. I recently completed a Faulkner course, and of all of his "genius" novels--"As I Lay Dying," "Light in August," "Go Down, Moses," "The Sound and the Fury," and "Absalom! Absalom!"--I believe that this one has the strongest emotional core. Read the whole thing; your experience will be much richer.

It becomes quite clear after reading Go Down Moses why many critics call this William Falkner's most mature book dealing with race. In Go Down Moses, the black characters are not only as well represented as may be possible from a white author, they are believable and easy to relate to. The main character "Uncle Ike", the grandson of an influential plantation owner, comes to represent everyone who struggles with identity in the miserable face of racism. The style of the book itself was confusing for readers and critics when first published, as it makes use of a series of chapters, each with its own title and numbered sections. Faulkner resisted having the book called a collection of short stories and most modern readers should have little problem with its nonsequential chapters and its sometimes, seemingly, unrelated characters. If you have read some Faulkner, especially A Light in August or Absalom, Absalom or if you enjoy authors such as Toni Morrison and Richard Wright you must read this book to get an idea of just how far Faulkner came toward wrestling with race in his time.

If you want a book that will get your mind stirring, this is it.

This book should be course-required reading for those aspiring to a career in radio. As a student studying broadcast communications this book has been invaluable at framing the industry and providing insight into the nuances of the medium. Mr McCoy has been a pioneer in the industry and has consistently inspired creativity in others... this book continues that trend.

As a person in the radio industry, "No static" gives one the straight goods. Quincy MCCoy has become my new mentor. "No static" certinally has opened my eyes to a industry that I thought I knew. If there is one book about the business we love to love, Q's book is a page tuner and a must read!!.

Any author who tries to su up the life of Robert Johnson is going to have a hard time. The life of this man is a mystery beyond belief. The one thing that stands out is the music. I really feel that owning Johnson music is better than any book. Pick up the two CD set that has the booklet. Read that booklet and then put the CD's in and get ready for an experience this book can not give you. This book is good after you have done this. The music helps explain things a little more.

It's a long way from the Mississippi Delta to Australia but this screenplay allowed me to visualise and feel the passion and raw edge to the music and landscape of Robert Johnson. It seems a shame that no Director has been brave enough to attempt to put this tale onto film as it could surely be an outstanding work if properly attacked. The comprehensive attached notes provide the reader with an opportunity to fill in any gaps in their knowledge to the point where one can almost picture the juke joints with their duelling musicians. The brutality of life in this community was shocking to me and the early death of Robert Johnson now seems to be less of a tragedy and more of an inevitability.

I never read anything like this before--it was like watching an amazing movie in written form. This unique book is an undiscovered gem.