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This started our group on the pathway of all the "Requisites" series, with a common trait of easy to use good clinical information in all of them.
Byron Faber MD
Silverdale, Wa
Its clear and simple english make it a breath of freshair
to read.
Lets just look at one sentence:
"Everytime I go back to brownsville its as if I had never
been away"
It is the world outside of Brownsville that looms over the book and the spirit of its narrator. Kazin successfully captures the yearning for new experiences that filled his heart as he grew up in the streets. It was that yearning that led him to the public library and ultimately across the bridges and out of the Brooklyn borough. It was also that yearning that made him wonder about a world that was not filled with Jews.
The mystery of the lands that lay beyond Brownsville's streets fills the book with a sense of tension. We can almost feel the young Kazin's heart burst as he begins to sense the vastness of the world. "Beyond! Beyond!" the narrator shouts, and prose turns into poetry in many passages of the book as he seeks to express the mixture of fear and exhiliration stirring within him.
One chapter, "The Kitchen," has been frequently anthologized, and rightfully so. It is a meditation on the room in which his mother spent much of her time working on the sewing she took in to make extra money. In the end, his mother's constant pounding on the foot treadle of the sewing machine comes to the author to represent the fire burning within her -- to achieve, to make a better life for her son, to survive in a strange new land where this exiled Jewish woman is once again a stranger.
This is a great book that deserves a vast readership. Though not a novel, it takes its place next to "The Rise of David Levinsky" and "Call It Sleep" as a masterpiece of immigrant and Jewish/American literature.
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This book is a treat. It is that rare amalgamation of biography, the geologic history of the Malay archipelago and an account of the geology and biodiversity of the Malay archipelago with maximal interest to any biologist or anyone who has the slightest interest in the wildlife of Austro-Asia.
It goes into exquisite detail into the formation of endemic species on island communities and bemoans the lack of botanical exposure in most studies. It also has one or two spectacular maps of ancient SE Asia. More maps and diagrams would have aided the discussion about localities which are usually very obscure to most readers.
This book deserves to be talked about and will certainly benefit the wildlife and our appreciation of Wallace and that region in all facets. Thank you Penny.
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It's organized logically: 35 lessons, 1 per day for 5 weeks, in the following order: rules, scoring, bids, notrumps, rebids, slams, competitive bids, doubles, finesse, squeezes, and on to esoteric tips that only the masters need to learn about. It covers the conventions naturally, as they come up, and also lets you know which ones are frequently needed and which are "once in a blue moon." There are plenty of examples and self-tests along the way, which let you know if you need to reread a section.
Best of all is the writing - Sheinwold is witty, making you feel like an insider to the world of smart bridge playing. If you're a beginner, you'll find him lucid and easy to follow; even a pro should take tips from the later sections. You needn't get far through the book before you start wishing you had a better partner, which I think is probably the ultimate test of any bridge book.
Sheinwold himself is an interesting fellow - a native of Great Britain, he grew up in the USA, then headed the Department of Codes and Ciphers of the O.S.S. during World War II. He returned to bridge when the war was over, making his living at playing and writing about bridge.
This book was written in 1959, but isn't dated at all, and its long life should be the best testimony to its merit. There are two very, very mildly misogynistic jokes ("who can ever tell what a woman is thinking?" is the worse of them) scattered in the text, which were well within the bounds of repartee in 1959, but which don't seem appropriate in 2003. That's the only bad thing I can find to say.
If you have any interest in bridge, you ought to read this book!
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He identifies three different stages or rhythms in educational methodology that happen in tandem and in rotation (I visualize a geocentric universe filled with epicycles of rotating moons and planets to illustrate the layers and rings of motion in teaching). He bases these stages on Hegel's Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis, but he adapts them to the classroom and human learning. He calls these rhythms Romance, Precision, and Generalization. In Romance, the teacher needs to awake the sense of wonder and curiosity in a student's mind. This will provide the impetus to pursue the learning to the next stage: Precision. In the second stage, the student studies by drill and repetition the formulae, rules, and grammars that build upon a thorough knowledge of a filed. In the third stage, Whitehead declares that the student needs to move into a realm of Generaliztion. In this rhythm, the student makes connections, applications, and full, mature usage of the material and ideas.
I wish more teachers and teachers interested in developing their pedagogical methodolgy would take the time to read this short masterful book.