Well, why not?
I have to admit that this book on David looks good. However, whilst flipping thru the book, I came across the end section and there was this picture of the author in full frontal nudity, in a heroic pose. I don't see the link between a photo of a naked man and David's biography.
I can only attribute this to the fact that the author is indulging in narcissistic display.

I was thoroughly impressed with this profile of Jacques-Louis David. It was given to me as a gift and I was not sure of quite what to expect. From my experience, David is often given little more than a few pages (or even a few brief paragraphs) in art textbooks and thus if a person wants to know more, it is necessary to do a bit of digging.

From the introduction, my fear was dispelled and I knew I was in for a treat. The author discusses David's personal life, his political ideas and involvement, the relevant historical details, and David's works. The illustrations are wonderful and aside from David's paintings and sketches, the works of artists like Boucher, Vien, Caravaggio, Poussin, Gros and Ingres are included. Lee generally gives a fair amount of analysis on each of David's works. Most students will recognize The Oath of the Horatii, The Death of Socrates, and Marat Breathing his Last but will also see and learn about The Coronation, The Distribution of the Eagle Standards, Brutus, Intervention of the Sabine Women, Belisarius Receiving Alms and Mars Disarmed By Venus, to name a few. Regarding the politics of the French Revolution, Lee discusses David's role, his allies, his enemies, and his skillful use of paintings as propaganda. We see David shift from painter to the monarchy to painter for the Revolution to painter for Napoleon to painter for himself, warts and all. One should not assume that Lee candy-coats the issues in this book. He neither presents David as a flawless genius nor spoils the book with pretentious blather. The text is informative and sophisticated without being cumbersome or haughty.

Other great features of the book include a convenient glossary, short biographies on pertinent figures, a map and a timeline. Whether you are an expert art historian or a student, you will find this book to be a great addition.

Phaidon's new ART & IDEAS series has been consuming since I first purchased their NEOCLASSICISM and definitely will not be last. As expected from Phaidon, the production value is exquisite. Though compact, measuring 8in X 6in, it is lavishly illustrated in full luminous colors. There are two-page spread of David's popular works like THE OATH OF THE HORATII, THE CORONATION OF THE EMPEROR, and THE INTERVENTION OF THE SABINE WOMEN. Lee discusses David's bitter beginnings and his triumphs, the works in French political context, and the artist's inspirations and influences. Mercifully lacking in exceeding hero-worship prose, Lee also discusses David's jealousy and his extreme political views. Pompous, overeducated art scholars may dismiss the text as dry, plain, or written for "kids," but this page-turner is still a terrific overview of David's works. The book is painstakingly designed in such a way that you don't have to flip back and forth for a pictorial reference when reading a particular text; most of the illustrations are conveniently placed not more than three page-flip away from the relevant text. With its uncluttered, elegant cover design, and excellent editorial, Phaidon has another winner. Bring on Bruguel, Klimt, Caravaggio, and Magritte! More!

This book is aweful! Who wants to hear about a girl dreaming of her lover who leaves to go to college, and he will return in 2 months?

This book was neither extravagantly wonderful or treacherously boring. In fact at the beginning it was exciting and then as the story progressed it became bland. And then there was a sudden turn at the end of the book, where the sheik handed over Halima to Atiya.The story didn't go through smoothly. I can see how some people would like the book, but I would not recommend it.

the book was beautifully written and shows exaclty how even bad people can have goodness in them to do the rigght thing. the book is a bout Halima(a girl slim and strong as th e date palm, fleet-foted as a gazelle) and the boy she is in love with, Atiyah(a boy of promise and hope, whose name means Gift of God). Atiyah has been sent away as a political pawn to study in Fez. As Halimas tribe moves to a new camp she is lost in a sandstorm and captured by an emeny tribe. The sheikh wishes to marry her in 3 moons time, the only way for that not to happen is if Atiyah comes to resue her.

Aspern & Wagram 1809: Mighty Clash of Empires (Osprey Military Campaign, No 33)by Ian Castle, David G. Chandler (Editor)is a good overview of the battle that was the follow up to Austerlitz and Napoleon great victory. The battles described in the book in themselves are not that exciting or interesting, but when read in the proper historical context are well worth the read.

The book is written in the traditional style in a very readable format. One gets the bascis of the conflict as well as the basic whys and wherefores. All in all this is a positive read.

I'll admit it -- I'm a Napoleonic novice. I've been drawn to the period by the epic scope of the wars, the brilliance of the generalship, and all the pretty uniforms.

Most of the works I've read on the period (and they're not many) have been extremely dry. The Osprey Campaign series tends to lose sight of the forest for the trees; there's lots of detail about where the voltiguer company of the 1er ligne spent the time between 1307 and 1418, but not much sense of the ebb and flow of battle.

Not so with this book. The detail is still there, but the reader comes away with a true appreciation of the fortunes of both armies in the 1809 campaign.

The orders of battle will prove very useful for wargamers, as they provide the strengths of the various units.

The only real drawback to this work is the lack of personalities. We get some small glance inside the mind of Charles, but Napoleon and the lesser generals are never fleshed out. I'd have liked some commentary on their various views of the fighting.

This is a companion volume to the author's book on Eckmuhl in the same series. Both, in my opinion, are excellent. The author has produced a balanced account, using both Austrian and French sources, that is both reliable and appropriate and acceptable to use as a reference.

There are a few minor errors, such as confusing voltigeurs and chasseurs in the French light infantry regiments, stating 'there was little tactical distinction' between French line and light infantry, and that Berthier, Napoleon's chief of staff, was initially in the campaign the commander of the French Army of Germany, which he was not. However, these faux pas do not detract from the overall impact of the book. The author is quick to point out, however, that 'In the Hapsburg army, progression was dictated more by birth and seniority than by military prowess' and that the Austrian heavy cavalry didn't use a backplate for their cuirass which 'was a serious disadvantage for Austrian cuirassiers when they clashed with their French counterparts.' Not all agree with these assessments, especially some historians who are pro-Austrian, and the author has done well to point out these facts.

The narrative is lively, the account of the campaign and battles accurate, and the casualty figures close to the mark. Overall this is an excellent account of a critical campaign, and with its companion volume on Eckmuhl, a reliable, thorough reference that can be used with confidence by historians, wargamers, and enthusiasts.

I was disappointed that Osprey chose to reuse some prints from its Men-at-Arms series, some of which may have small errors in them. However, the black and white illustrations are superb, and the reuse of those prints does not detract from the overall impact of the volume.

This book is highly recommended.

Granted, this may be the most extensive collection of Atget's Paris work in one volume, but the quality of the photographic reproductions leaves a lot to be desired. Although not as exhaustive, Andreas Krase's "Atget's Paris" contains beautiful, high- quality reproductions of a large number of Atget's Paris photos. The Krase book also contains a very well written and informative essay on Atget's personal history and work. For true Atget junkies, you may want to own both; but if you can only have one, or if you want the one that best "transports" you into Atget's paris, go for the Krase book. ...and finally for real buffs of old Paris photos (especially pre-Hausmannization), you may try to seek out the work of the photographer Marville (good luck, unfortunately it seems his stuff is out-of-print at present), or the Panaromanic Photograph collection in the "American Memory" collection of the Library of Congress...

This book is perhaps one of the most wonderful collections of photographs that I have ever had the pleasure of owning. Eugène Atget, a failed actor, painter, sailor, and soldier, eventually settled on photography as a career some thirty-odd years into his life, and set out to make a photographic record of the whole of Paris at the end of the nineteenth century. By 1920, some 4,000 negatives existed, from which many have been culled for the present volume.

Of course, as cities, go, Paris, like London or Rome, has perhaps more than its share of photogenic sites. However, oddly enough, considering that these photos are more than three quarters of a century old, no book has ever reproduced the experience of Paris more to my taste than this collection of Atget's work. Organised by arrondissement (the subsections into which the whole of Paris is divided), the book offers a systematic voyage past landmarks familiar and unfamiliar. Images of the Jardin des Tuilleries, Notre Dame, the Palais du Louvre, the Champs-Elysées and so many other familiar names and places are here. Faces of long-dead Parisians stare out from streets now populated by their descendants. It is as though the very images, bathed in light now a century gone, come to life in these photos. All the majesty and squalor, the beauty and degradation of a great city; these things are all captured by Atget's lens. The effect is moving and eerie, and suits what is arguably the Continent's greatest city down to the ground.

And, on a strictly personal note, one of my favourite photos is taken from the 17th Arrondissement, in the Quartier des Ternes. It is of a café in the Avenue de la Grande-Armée, dated 1924 or 1925, empty chairs and tables bathed in sunlight, and an advert for Bass Extra Stout painted on the window! Truly a sublime moment.

Do yourself a favour, if you enjoy old photographs or love Paris, or both. Find a copy of this book, and enjoy it on those days when you can't actually be there.

To draw the most from this new book, you need to know already quite a bit about occupied France. The authors trace in detail academic perceptions of Vichy since 1945. Regime apologists tried to maintain in the 1950s that Petain had played a clever game in seeming to collaborate whilst plotting to maintain French independence. We now understand this was nonsense: Petain and Laval may have been interested in collaboration, but Hitler's only concern was booty. But equally in error was the Gaullist position that forty million Frenchmen supported the Resistance against a tiny number of traitors. The editors demonstrate that more recent research has shown how fragmented both the pro and anti Vichy groups were. For example, it was possible to be faithful to Petain whilst being anti nazi. Many ordinary French people, both in the cities and in the countryside, adopted an eclectic attitude according to "how the wind was blowing" in their area. The book suggests new lines for research on Vichy, especially a comparative approach with what was happening in other occupied countries such as Bulgaria and Hungary. The book is largely a tribute to Robert Paxton who wrote a ground breaking study of wartime France in the 1970s. This reviewer found the continuous adulation of Paxton, however merited, somewhat repetitive. You will enjoy this new volume if you really want to explore in depth the meaning of Vichy over the past sixty years. Given that France was still prosecuting men for war crimes in the late 1990s, Petain's regime is still a hotly debated topic in that country's academic establishment.

This book is an essential text for anyone interested in the history of of France during the Vichy regime. It offers a superlative compilation of the latest scholarship in the field, contributed by some of its most important writers, people like Michael Marrus, Jean-Pierre Azema, Henri Rousso, Stanley Hoffmann, Philippe Burrin, etc. etc. The introduction by Fishman and Smith is a thorough map of the entire contents of the book which, again, provides a rich collection of articles destined perhaps not for the general reader without any background on the subject, although the book itself is reader friendly....

Is Jordan's book a popular history or a scholarly work? Professor Jordan is in a better position to say than I, but I had difficulty seeing it as a scholarly work, despite its fifty pages of endnotes. Mostly this is because Jordan uses the terminology of class struggle. Surely even academia has reached the point of recognizing that this is all nonsense, and not even important nonsense, despite the millions of lives it has cost. Jordan must be aware that the very word "bourgeoisie," which he uses in the belittling way you'd expect, literally means "city-dwellers." But he never points out that, for all the difficulties of the workers' lives, they evidently found the city, and specifically Paris, preferable to the alternatives.

It's also a bit hard to take Jordan seriously when he, more than once, uses the word "hoard" to mean "horde." The mind, violently derailed, seeks a subtle bon mot, but in vain, for there is no humour in this book. This may well be Jordan's editor's failing, but Jordan bears the responsibility. The writer's language is a chauffeur, carrying us effectively but above all unobtrusively to our destination.

Worse even than the fallacies inherent in class-struggle terminology is the simple fact that it's deadly boring. And that was the problem I had when I viewed the book as a popular history. Compare Jordan with Robert Caro's Power Broker, the popular biography-history of Robert Moses and the remaking of New York, quite similar in many ways to the haussmannization of Paris. Caro fills his book with characters and anecdotes. In sad contrast, Jordan has but a few characters, Haussmann and Louis Napoleon chief among them. The other humanity affected by their activities is lumped together into anonymous classes: the bourgeoisie, the landlords, the workers, the national assembly. But where's the story? Stories are about individuals, and there just aren't any!

Jordan tells us repeatedly, and with evident contempt, that Haussmann was an archetypal bureaucrat, an authoritarian, an opportunist, an autobiographer blindly in love with himself. Well, yes, but we don't want to be told this; we want to be shown. Where are the examples? Where are the stories? We get only a few self-aggrandizing quotations from the autobiography.

So the book fails as popular biography. We see Haussmann in one dimension only, and by the end, we really don't care to learn more. But there must have been more! There was a wife, there were daughters, there were colourful mistresses, about whom the wife exercised restraint. But we learn little more than what I write here.

Or if the real Haussmann was in fact deadly dull, how about the thousands of people whose lives he affected? Surely, some of their stories must have survived, and some of the surviving stories must be worth the telling.

Jordan tells us how the Louvre was extended, the Rue du Rivoli was punched through, the Opera was built, the Hotel de Ville and the Tour St Jacques were isolated from the city - these are but statements of brick and mortar. Even in brick-and-mortar terms, one suspects there is a story about, for example, the Sainte Chapelle, imprisoned by the court. The closest we get to the life of the city are remarks that the neighborhood of Les Halles was clogged with the daily traffic of the markets, that the boulevardiers adopted Haussmann's chestnut-lined avenues, and that the wide streets were barricaded by insurrectionists as effectively as the old passageways. Collective humanity, all of it, no stories, no interest. Even when Jordan cites Victor Hugo, he fails to capture our interest. Rather remarkable, that, when you think of it!

What was I expecting, what had I hoped for? Jordan himself (and thanks!) mentions Robert Moses, reminding me of Caro's book, which I hadn't read for some years. It's a good contrast. Caro doesn't explicitly discuss New York in the terms of Jane Jacobs' Death and Life of Great American Cities, but it's easy for the reader to supply the analysis himself, and if he knows New York, to observe the effects of Moses' actions in the quality of the city. Sadly, Jordan doesn't give us enough to do the same with Paris. The material surely exists: even today, hotels on the left bank - which was neglected by haussmannization - advertise themselves as being "in the safe part" of Paris. Someone as intimately familiar with the geography and history of Paris as Jordan could have given us that view.

The first thing I had hoped for was, then, the ability to go somewhere in Paris, or perhaps on a map or only in my memory, and say, "This is how it was, and these interesting events were part of its transformation into what we see today." I already play these little mind games with Hugo's Paris.

Though a Jane-Jacobs analysis might well disagree with the conclusion, both Jordan and Caro lead us to the view that, thirty, fifty, a hundred years later, when the ruined have died and the bonds have been paid off, the city is the better for having undergone her ordeal, that eventually, the end justifies the means. Even if we were to accept the conclusion as a matter of pragmatism, however, we cannot accept it morally or ethically. Surely there must be a way for men to build congenial and functional environments by mutual consent, without having to despoil one another. Can a city be renewed - probably a continuous process, not an overhaul - without the use of authoritarian force or major disaster? London had her fire, Germany had the war, Paris had Haussmann, New York had Moses. Hong Kong, maybe?

To the best of my knowledge, this question has never been addressed by any author. The writer who does this, with intellectual rigor, imagination, lots of examples, and a lively style, will make a real contribution. That's the book I'd really like to read.

Jordan has marshalled his impressive research and writing skills to tell the story of how such an arrogant, unsentimental, and philistine man created one of the most magnificent urban centers in the world. When Jordan discusses how certain roads and venues were decided upon, the laying of the sewers, the struggles that the Prefect of the Seine had with his political opponents and landlord antagonists, how he cooked the books to raise the necessary cash for the effort, and Haussmann's inglorious fall, the book is a first-rate monograph. The author's presentation makes us see how Paris became the prime example of "authoritarian urban planning" and yet also bravely suggests that such iron-fisted control was needed to defeat the coterie of landlords, politicans, and entrepreneurs whose personal interests lay in defeating Haussmann's schemes. Yet Jordan's prose is a bit too Haussmann-like itself. Jordan conceives of Haussmann as the prefect did of Paris -- in a singularly determined way -- and repeatedly insists that we share this view. He constantly hammers away at Haussmann's arrogance, contempt for democratic procedures, his political ruthlessness and his disdain for the poor. And while these details are not correct, they're repeated so constantly that they ultimately detract from Jordan's achievement -- it's as though the author came to resent spending all those years and efforts researching a man who ultimately repelled him. Jordan is so insistent that we see Haussmann on his terms that he doesn't let us enjoy for ourselves the paradoxes and foibles of his protagonist. When the baron writes some feeble pastoral poetry about his youth, Jordan doesn't trust us enough to relish the absurdity of this autocrat imagining himself as a romantic, he insists on telling us how absurd it is and why we should think so. We're also constantly and needlessly told each time he took credit for the work of someone else and how much his arrogance was flattered by the attentions of Napoleon III. Jorda! n grounds his protagonist's character so early on that these repeated instances of his appalling behavor seem petty. Inasmuch as he criticizes Haussmann for creating a Paris that orders around its citizens, Jordan himself overly-directs his readers. Moreover, the book spends less time than I would have liked discussing the myriad problems of transforming Paris -- there's less here about the expropriations, the architecture of the new Haussmann buildings (virtually non-existent in the book despite the early presence of the intriquing quote that "Haussmann's Paris represents a paradox in that he created an architectually fascinating city without creating any memorable buildings"), and the forced relocations of the poor into the banlieue than on Haussmann's bullying tactics in the Yonne and Bordeaux (fascinating as those episodes are Jordan overly relishes them as evidence of the Baron's ruthlessness). In other words, there are several instances where there's more build-up than pay-off. Why issue it a seven despite these critical flaws? For one thing, Jordan has turned an administrator's career into a compelling read -- no mean achievement -- and he successfully alters our traditional view of the Second Empire as a "carnival empire" to show how it had serious modernizing concerns. Aside from Jordan's personal interjections, all of the episodes in the book are fascinating and well-written if a little disproportionately represented and the author gives us the first clearly written book in English as to how Paris became the city it did. Mostly, like Haussmann's achievement, Jordan's book, despite being a bit overbearing and contemptuous, shows us how the most mundane details of bureaucratic life can produce a work of fascination and, yes, beauty.

I was very disappointed in this book. It is more of a coffee table book than a guide to setting tables. It has some beautiful photography and illustrations but there is hardly any writing.The few table that are shown are set with such expensive items you wouldn't be able to afford to put any food on the plates. I would not have purchased this book had I known this.

I had the chance to take the tour of Mr. Gainey's garden that takes place every mother's day in Decatur, GA. Despite the fact that the settings and objects pictured in this book look like I might not use them to eat with, Mr. Gainey does. I would say that the other reviewer missed the whole point of this book. It was so refreshing to see someone take pleasure in both common and rare objects such as Mr. Gainey. (i.e. in his garden I found old tin bucket next to a hand built ceramic sculpture). This is not a how to "set a table",but it is a how to "think about a table setting" with great pictures, and use of one-of-a-kind & common items together.

I bought this book for my trip to Kenya Uganda and Tanzania. I thought that I might want to travel to Ethiopia or down to Zambia and Zimbabwe....this guide is much too condensed to be helpful, and most travelers I met hated this guide and would borrow or end up buying the LP East Africa guide. You would be much better off buying a regional guide rather then this monster. Just the weight of the book alone isn't worth carrying around with you. I actually ended up ripping this book to shreads and keeping only about ten pages of it then buying the more in depth East Africa Guide.

Don't get me wrong, I love the lonely planet guides. Just not this one. I can whole heartedly recomment the East Africa guide and the Trekking East Africa guide.

This book, "Africa on a Shoestring, 9th Ed" has a broad coverage; although its chapters are not as detailed as many tourists would expect them to be.
Again, this book would have been of better psychic value, had its authors showed confidence in the sections they dealt with. Its 'information' became a wet blanket for me. Many readers who intend to visit African countries are likey to be discouraged by its relentless pessimistic approach. Its outlook is more critical than 'touristical'. The general impression is this: "something good may not come out of Africa". That is shameful! The term "bush-taxi", which was used over and over again, in lieu of a more cordial 'local-taxi' sounds offensive.
I think that if written (or revised) without assumptive bias, this book would be of better quality and value to its users.

Africa is large, and it's hard or impossible to concentrate so much information and advice into one book. Yet, Lonely Planet - as always - managed to do this with great muster. Unless you have time and money to buy the many LP guides to single regions and countries of Africa, this is the book you want before you even plan of visiting the black continent !

Eloqently and aesthetically written for writers, this is the book for those who delight in literature. The book transubstantiate the reader:Macey establishes a post-humous dialogue in which the reader uncovers the archeoalogy of Foucault, his experiences as a writer, politician and philosopher. The author takes the reader through the labyrinth at the centre of which Foucault lurks as a minotaur. It uncoils the myth of literature's wordily genesis in which writing is discussed extensively and given the authority of infinity, as an original force that was there from the beginning before things unfolded into the natural world of things. Foucault died from intellectual gibbosity-"inflammation of the cerebrum".

Trueman Myaka Tel:0927 31 303 6466 Fax: 0927 31 303 4493

david macey's biography of michel foucault is both the best researched and the most carefully analysed account of foucault's life currently available. While it lacks both the interpretative drive behind james miller's "the passion of michel foucault" (who reads foucault as a nietzscheian), and the treatment of friendships and specific themes throughout foucault's life given in "michel foucault et ses contemporains" (didier eribon's second work on foucault), macey is incredibly erudite, very well-balanced and a solid reader of foucault. macey recounts many more details of mf's life than any other account, and doesn't take foucault's self-reflective moments for granted as correct interpretations of his past actions and thought (Foucault gave tons of interviews, where he tended to reflect on his past works from his present perspective - so he could say that he had always been working on power etc, when this argument could undermine tensions and different trends in his work). he gives a solid, if long account of foucault's intellectual development, manages to place him in as much of a context as the biographical genre permits and, within this context, is mildly critical of his subject. macey is also a fun read. perhaps not as much as miller, but he certainly provides better balanced -and more interesting to read- accounts (than both miller and eribon) of foucault's works as well as of his life and homosexuality

nonetheless, there are important criticisms to be made. there's a certain elegiac tone throughout much of the book which is not totally appropriate to foucault's thought and perhaps even to foucault himself. this tone complicates the problem of writing a biography of a thinker without treating him through his own lens of comprehending "the subject," "the author," "the self" etc. in other words, the account is stylistically rather conservative, something that might lead readers to doubt the level of depth at which foucault is approached. and indeed, though the depth is considerable, the approach is too conservative to catch some of the more radical tones in foucault especially as regards his "post-modern" tendencies (foucault was suspicious of that term).

still, this is a very good biography and a good reading of MF, that mixes well his life and his thought. worth reading, even (especially) if you've read other accounts. it complements them well and improves on them considerably.

David Macey's "The Lives of Michel Foucault" - 1993 is by far the best of the three significant biographies that have thus far appeared (there is James Miller's "The Passion of Michel Foucault" - 1993 and Betsy Wing's translation of Didier Eribon's "Michel Foucault" - 1991 all available on Amazon.com). For Macey, the "silence" of Foucault is something to be taken seriously, not as theoretically authorized avoidance of truth telling, but rather as the bewilderment of a man; a real man situated in his time and place, caught between different roles and self-conceptions. Macey tells Foucault's story clearly and without fanfare. What is truly scholarly helpful in Macey's telling is a rigorous archive of how Foucault, this most tenacious detractor of institutional power, was ironically the beneficiary of the French intellectual establishment, and how this retiring scholar proved remarkably proficient at seizing political moments for stepping up onto the public stage. Macey's intensive research and detailed textual elucidation provides the type of documentary support that is often lacking in James Miller's "passionate" book. Macey's book, is conversely, is a cautious account of Foucault's doings, written with expertise of a careful study and a sharp spirit of defensiveness, as might be expected from a biography that has been duly "authorized" by Foucault's surviving companion Daniel Defert. As opposed to Miller's very good biography that offered a portrait of Foucault the man and thinker - Macey's rendition pays attention to the day-to-day goings on offers the reader a more vivid picture of Foucault as a political activist. Macey painstakingly explores the early 1970s - when Foucault plunged into a life of sustained political involvement. I am grateful to all three biographers for making Foucault come alive as a person and more understandable as a scholar. Macey though, is really good at taking Foucault's anti-humanist perspective and developing it, not as a theme or explanation of Foucault's life but rather as a topic of study. According to Macey, no French theoretician has had a more recondite or permanent influence on American thinking then Michel Foucault. Foucault, who been dead for more than a decade now may no longer be the first name to be dropped at academic circles and seminars, but the terms he made famous, terms like 'discourse' and 'networks of power' - often misappropriated and dropped at a moments notice get a very good treatment in this book. Macey is really helpful in taking the often cryptic writing of Foucault and makes it accessible to the unfamiliar - and at times even familiar - Foucault scholar. According to Macey, the cult of Foucault, matured in its impact because Foucault and his cohort had intellectual claims beyond the reading of "texts." Going beyond the often dead ended practice of "deconstruction" practiced by such luminaries as Lacan, Derrida and Levi-Strauss.

Foucault was shaping an enterprise in anti-humanist, anti-essentialist "discourse." In sync with many other strains in the thought of his continental contemporaries - with Kant, Nietzsche and Heidegger were acknowledged as his primary influences while Althusser, Canguilhem and Barthes were included in the mix - Foucault's ideas about the essential constitution of civil society drew on a ardently anti-liberal attack on the Enlightenment. Far from being the light of reason to shed light and resolve problems surrounding the human condition, the Enlightenment according to Foucault replaced the ancien regime model of social marginalization and class demarcations with a better mousetrap of domination, which was simply a modernized technology of social control. It would no longer be possible to look to the obvious figures of sovereignty and privilege - embodied in king and counts - for the telling signs of "power." Power was beginning to make its way into the ordinary institutions of social life. The reigning king of the humanist project was still Sartre, who became the locus of Foucault's efforts. Sartre, according to Foucault stood for a tired philosophy of "Marxist humanism." Sartre did not see, in Foucault's view that humanism was inevitably the soiled result of the new technology of domination that sprang up with the Enlightenment. Sartre, according to Foucault, was the poster boy of the Enlightenment. Macey spells out how according to Foucault, Humanism was just the happy facade put on the medical and scientific lessening of the human being into an itemized, categorized and catalogued object of a detached "gaze" - recognition of this phenomenon according to Foucault should put to rest any ebullience for the communitarian didactic discourse of the Sartrean "politics of commitment." More openly then does Miller (or Eribon for that matter), Macey recognizes Foucault's ongoing struggle against Sartre's "gaze," against any other interpretative or evaluative power. What was really happening, Foucault posits was the construction of a "networks" of power - though one was not supposed to ask "'whose' power?" Power, this new social fixation with discipline and surveillance, became its own rationale according to Foucault. As I mentioned above, power was not to be found in leaders or social organizations or parties or in any given social structure, but was rather a kind of "discourse, " a set of terms or symbolic representations that connect, in an abstract way, the given instances of discipline and surveillance at work in social life. For Foucault, to fight a diffuse "power" was to be able to pick any point of attack in any institutional setting and do the work of social revolution. Foucault is not keen to lay out a recipe for such transgression but his strength is in critique. Macey's strength is making this often baroque author accessible - the Macey that I appreciate.

Miguel Llora

Now I know why David Morrell is one of my favorite writer.Burnt Sienna starts with a bang and does not stop until the explosive ending.This book will make you read it in two days.Mr. Morrell,please do not wait so long to write another.If you liked the fast pace action of "Extreme Denial" and the love story of "Double Image" than this book is for you.David Morrell's books keep getting better and better.

David Morrell is one of my favorite authors. He writes with honesty and depth. Chase Malone is a great character who has created the life he always wanted. His independence matters more to him than just about anything because in the days before he claimed his independence, he nearly lost his life for what other people felt was important.

With Sienna, Morrell has created a beautiful woman who for the last several years has lived a very sheltered life. She owes everything to her husband. Problem: Her husband is an international arms merchant who kills his wives when they begin to show signs of aging--a plot point that makes perfect sense when you find out why. He hires one of the world's greatest artists to paint a portrait to capture his wife's beauty the way no photograph could ever do. Bellasar makes a great villain. He's got power and money and an insatiable desire to crush those who oppose him. When he and Malone clash, the conflict will knock your socks off.

Morrell has crafted a fine-tuned thriller that starts fast and never slows down. The book is a lot of fun, but I'll also tell you that the last page makes the book. Powerful stuff!

Do yourself a favor and read this one!

Morrell has long been a favorite author of mine, and although he slipped a little with his last book, he has delivered another winner in Burnt Sienna. Interesting characters, tons of suspense, and fast paced action make for a great read that you will finish before you know it. Some of the events are predictable, but the with the intrigue and intense action you won't care. Morrell's writing is much better than most other books in the genre. If you are a Morrell fan or just a thriller fan in general, pick this one up.