Much has been said of the strumpets of yor, of wenches and bawdy house queens of the score...(from The Wicker Man, the Landlord's Daughter).

Actually, much more have been written about the uptight, repressed era of Victoria's ton, were passions simmered just under the surface. This book goes into an area not mined, the views of sexuality and desire in the working-class men and women of 19th Century London. The Writer relied on first hand documents uncovered in the now-closed Archives of a London foundling hospital, love letters and first-hand testimonies in court cases, to details the views on rape, flirtation and prostitution to which many women of the period in London were driven to survive, and the inevitability of being pregnant and alone in this grinding poverty.

The book contains cynicism, cruelty, yet is balanced with tenderness, dignity and generosity giving us a fascinating look behind the notions of Victoria's reign.

A MUST for anyone interested in the period. Especially recommended for writers of Victorian romance.

[This review is based only on selections from the work.]
This ethnography of the workers at, and the community surrounding, a nuclear waste processing plant in France is a striking, jarring expose of a industry fraught with danger and deception. Workers at a waste processing facility on an isolated peninsula in austere Normandy, are subject to intense (even overwhelming) safety procedures, as well as a technical-training context condescending in its language. The men and women (many of them underprivileged non-natives) who descend the rings of nuclear hell have created for themselves protective strategies to remain sane in an incredibly high-fear environment. Zonabend's piercing perception, compassion, and descriptive talent make this a brilliant ethnography. Especially worthwhile is her insightful conclusion which brings to the fore the immensely important role of imagination in human perception/behavior, and the tension between our scientific civilization and our primordial fears of the unknown or unknowable. One develops understanding for the challenges faced by those who work under such hazardous conditions, and truly comes to grips with the overwhelming power of the nuclear world when put into perspective with our ordinary mindsets. (One note: this translation might seem a bit ungainly.) All in all, highly recommended.

I was fortunate to be able to visit the Musee D'Orsay on my last trip to Paris. This book was filled with lovely photos of what the museum displays. It was a wonderful trip down memory lane of one of my favorite experiences.

I received "Paris in 3D" for Christmas and what a wonderful surprise! This book is exciting before you even open the front cover. The front of the book has a beautiful lenticular of the Eiffel Tower. But the wonder does not stop there. Each page reveals beautiful 3-D images which can be viewed with the viewers enclosed in the book. The paper is high quality and the reproductions are gorgeous! As if this weren't enough, the book is engrossing and full of interesting information. I have been interested in 3-D photography for six years. This is the kind of book that I would be comfortable recommending to anyone who loves beautiful, well produced books, regardless of their knowledge or interest in 3-D photography. It is truly a collector's item that the whole family would enjoy viewing.

I have spent the better part of the last twenty years reading up on matters of Australian Aboriginal culture. The books one comes across can usually get split between two camps: the touchy-feely spiritual and the footnote-laden inpenetrable. Here, at last, is a book that combines the rigor the academy and the clarity of the New Yorker magazine. If you really want to know about Warlpiri ritual, and specifically the universe of ceremonial life created by Warlpiri women, this is the book for you. There is insight on every page, and what strikes a particularly deep chord in me is the total absence of jargon. I've read the book twice now and I still can't detect a hidden agenda. The tone is respectful of the women under review and it is clear that Dussart not only speaks the language of the Warlpiri fluently (something I've generally found absent in most of the books by the so-called experts) she manages to fold that linguistic talent into the study without sounding pretentious or obscure. This is a model of what ethnography should be, a smart-bomb launched against the shelves of inaccessible nonsense that now dominate the Anthropology Section of your local university bookstore. My nomination for whatever prizes are out there for scholarship in the service of a people under assault--and here I'm talking as much about anthropology students as I am about indigenous Australians!

This is a must-have for the on-the-go business traveler who is tired of hearing his seat mate tell his personal story. The tests are "doable" and fun to complete. I highly recommend this book for the Francophile or the traveler who prefers the company of a book to a chatty seat partner! Usable, great grammar review, and best of all the answers are included at the back of the book. I highly recommend this reference book.

Francoise Darcy-Berube has done catechists and religious educators a great favor by writing this book! As she explains, getting people to go to church is not the main objective of religious education. A deep and holistic approach is necessary which develops an authentic religious and theological literacy on which to build a mature faith.

Berube begins her book by sharing a concern that was also a major problem for me. When the Catechism of the Catholic Church was published, I refused to have a copy in my religious education classroom for two years because of my own fear of how people would misuse the document. Berube felt likewise!

Faith is not primarily a cognitive exercise where the adherent memorizes the right answers. Yet, there are those who desire that religious education return to that "catechism" model with its exact question-and-answer pattern. As Berube says, religious education truly IS at a crossroads. Will we continue to better our approaches as we stay on the holistic path we have chosen since Vatican II, or will we turn back in fear and return to the "good old days" which may have been adequate for a time? Read the book and make your own choice. I suspect you'll find Berube's argument quite convincing. In short, we cannot turn back and lose what we have gained. And if you are one of those in religious education who are fighting "the good fight" to remain on this progressive path, you need this insightful little book in your arsenal.

The Rule and The Model is the primary work on contemporary architectural theory and the city. Theory is traced through instaurational (foundational) texts into architectural, utopian, urban, and quotidian principles. One can only muse over the impact if this had been translated into English twenty years ago. Urban theory began with the Teoria, (Cerda 1867) and the City as the cause rather than the consequence of civilization and the development of humanity.

Many authors critique. Francoise Choay challenges contemporary practice and defines pre-urbanism, urbanism, and I think opens the door for posturbanism. From the Ouverture (ouvre being roughly translatable as a call to participation): "But since the Industrial Revolution, when building acquired an explicit social dimension, and in the absence of a (never sucessfully formulated) 'science' of art which might at least provide some underlaying principles, the third level can be governed only by individual caprice: ideologies, tastes, and the idiosyncratic predilections of administrations, urbanists, architects, and sometimes individual users. Hence, contradictory trends or fashions dominate the false aesthetics of the present-day built environment, where futuristic or even surrealistic tendencies are associated with a 'retro' attitude. Architects pillage, with ruse or naivete, in the name of quotation or as brutal appropriation, all the styles of the past and even the mannerisms of the recent past, drawing equally on learned and vernacular, urban and rural, international and local sources. Hence also the double terrorism of stereotypes destined to flatter 'popular' taste, and of a complacent pseudo-culture of architects affiliated by the production of an ugliness both legendary and unique in history."

Several authors represent constructivism: Lefebvre, Harries, Soja, Choay; and comment respectively on the quotidian, modernity, postmodernism, and unique ugliness; and then open the door on possibilities of the everyday, festival, reason and faith, pleasure and the unforseen. These are standards for the Meta Mythic characters who design our landscapes. They are delightful suggestions towards an occupation for consciousness and satisfying use of that activity of the mind.

Merci mille fois Mme Choay!

very interesting village in franc

If you loved her first novel, Bonjour Tristesse!, then you are bound to adore this second novel of hers as much. Written forty years ago and set in the 1950s France, the novel tells the story of Dominique the young existential Sorbonne student who falls in love with Luc who is possibly thirty years older than she is. Sagan writes with conscise prose that spells out how it is like to be a twenty year old and love a fifty year old man. Her descpriptions of feelings and emotions of this delicate and confusing age is genuine and sincere. Bravo, Sagan!!