San Francisco politics. Bridge politics. Egos clashing and crashing. The original "Survivor" saga, this book has all sorts of people intrique. Strauss is definitely the book's Richard. If the two of them ever sought out the same goal....yikes!! Strauss cut deals with everyone from whom he could benefit, and he axed out those "friends" as soon as he was finished 'using' them. The designer, Ellis...out, and it was three years before he could find another job in the depression 30s. O'Shaunassy, as SF's city engineer, was right in there swinging from the start. Michael was voted out by Strauss, and cast aside. (He did finish the Hetch Hetchy project for the city.) Strauss created a string of bodies as his ego forged ahead to be known as "Mr. Bridge, designer, builder, ......" of the Golden Gate span. Well, he was none of these things. Unfortunately, the text is quite weak on providing the engineering details of the span.The few pictures the book has are interesting, but not sufficient to acquire a good idea of the supurb engineering that went into the structure. You'll have to go to another book for that!

The book is one of the few books that I've ever read twice. And I find that I've continued to tell other people about this book from time to time. I would characterize the book as a thriller or, at least a drama, for and about engineers. The book is highly location-conscious. After reading the book, you'll be able to relate how the Golden Gate Bridge is related to engineering companies in New York City, to fund-raising efforts in the northern counties in California, to engineering professors in the mid-west, to a theater designer of the 1939 World's Fair on Treasure Island, to professors at U.C.Berkeley, and to a certain humble bascule bridge that continues its unsung day-to-day chores in an obscure part of San Francisco. To repeat, I really liked the author's interconnections, that he related in the book. The book deserves to be back in print, and it deserves to be in every gift shop in the City. The book is highly fact-based (it is not laced with fanciful commentary), and yet the book is difficult to put down. Perhaps the most striking and sad part of Van Der Zee's book, is that the engineer responsible for most of the innovations of the bridge was left off of the plaque (for political reasons), which is mounted on the Golden Gate Bridge.

I thought this book was an excellent combination of information and facts. Not only was it easy to find the information you wanted but it was also very interesting, unlike many of these kinds of books. I think it is an excellent rescource for any teacher or person wanting to know about education and how we got where we are.

This book is about the basic history of American Education, from the Revolution to Modern Times. Chapters are broken down into time periods, many charts, graphs, timelines available. Critical Analysis sections, end-of chapter questions, and bibliographies for each chapter are very helpful! this book is great for a Foundations of Education course.

It is hard to tell how a man will do as President based on his experience. Some figures with virtually no political experience became good Presidents, such as Washington and Lincoln; others were failures such as Grant or Hoover. On the other hand, political experience is no guarantee of success: John Quincy Adams and James Buchanan had decent resumes going into office and had miserable presidencies. Martin Van Buren, one of the most politically talented of all Presidents, was not an utter failure, but he didn't shine in office either.

In Niven's biography, we follow Van Buren from his impoverished roots through his rise in New York state government. Although not perfect, Van Buren had enough political astuteness and the right sort of temperment to help create and lead a party machine and elevate New York's prominence on a national level. Becoming a trusted advisor to Andrew Jackson and a member of his cabinet eventually led to his Vice Presidency and then the Presidency. With a major financial crash occurring right as he got into office, Van Buren was struggling right off the bat, and wound up serving only a single term; nonetheless, in an era of one-term presidents (from 1837 to 1861, no president was re-elected), Van Buren was hardly thrown into ignonimy after his defeat; instead, he remained a powerful member of the Democratic party for the next two decades.

Niven's biography is generally favorable although he doesn't hide Van Buren's flaws. We learn of a man who was not a great ideologue but was one of the most masterful politicians of his era, holding his own with the often more prominent figures such as Jackson, Calhoun, Clay and Webster. He also wound up being a prominent figure in the anti-slavery movement, even running on the Free-Soil ticket at one point.

At times, however, this biography is a bit ponderous and often focuses so much on the political part of Van Buren's life that the personal part is pushed aside. Thus, although this may be the best Van Buren biography available (it may also be the only one), I cannot give it a full five stars. Nonetheless, this is overall a very good book and worth reading if you are interested in this period of history.

This is a very readable and interesting book that deals with the long and highly political life of Martin Van Buren. He comes off very well as a hard-working, fair and moral politician who practically establishes the democratic party as a well-oiled machine for both New York state and the United States. I have now read multiple books about the first eight presidents and he can hold his own with almost all of them so far. Highly recommended.

Van Buren wrote his memoirs in the 1850s while living in England. The work covers the period from his early political carrer in New York through Andrew Jackson's presidency. Van Buren's own presidency in not covered. His anecdotes regarding Jackson, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John Calhoun are interesting and stimulate one to read more of the era. The animosity between the Federalist and Republican parties in the early 19th century is also a common theme. There is a lot of self-serving fluff regarding issues the affected Van Buren the politician as the book passes the halfway point and my interest here waned. Van Buren never mentions his wife--although his sons are mentioned. If you are interested in this era of American history and have a prior grasp of the issues at hand, this work may provide some enjoyable and entertaining insight into the period.

I can't really believe I'm saying this, but if you've seen the film with Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart, then there's really not much that's new here for you. What the play *does* do, however, is cut out all the extra material that the film introduces, concentrating instead on the facinating love story between the witch Gilian and an "ordinary" man, Shep.

Growing up, I enjoyed the movie because, well, it was about magic and witches and was distinctly urban-filled with smoky underground clubs and jazz. Now that I'm older, however, I appreciate the story because of how I think it speaks to feelings which are present in no doubt many, if not all subcultures. Gillian's uncertainty about being a witch-pride mixed with a longing for something *different* in her life, something she wonders about without being certain that she'd want to actually experience-are very significant to the story.

Unfortunately, Van Druten seems to have lost interest in this thread toward the end of the play. Its close seems to be that of a rather traditional love story, albeit with the trappings of witches and sorcery. Gillian's emotions seem very two-dimensional. Although she says that the emotions she's experiencing are "new" to her, it seems as though she could have had more of an opportunity to try and express them a little better. You don't get a lot of time to sense that much is different with her aside from redecorating her apartment.

Another weakness I found in the play is that it seems the slightest bit rushed after Gillian tells Shep that she's a witch. I always kind of felt that way about the movie, too, but it really seems apparent here without the film's additional distractions and extra scenes. The events in the first two acts and the first scene in Act III take place over two weeks, whereas the final scene in Act III takes place two months later. The events of the preceding two months are summarized, in retrospect, by Gillian's aunt without any real glimpse of what either Gillian or Shep had been like in the interim.

Despite its weaknesses, however, this is an entertaining and even thought-provoking play if you're the type to carry it out of its context and contemplate it a little further. For its sake, I hope you are.

Photographer Susan Rademacher Fry presents almost two dozen landscape projects by Wolfgang Oehme and James van Sweden in a coffee-table sized book. The photos are technically excellent and effectively communicate the naturalistic language O&vS use in their projects.

There is much emphasis on using native plants and plants that make sense in the context of the garden.Large grasses figure prominently in many of the designs. And many feature rudbeckias and sedums. The goal seems to be to knit a building seemlessly into its enviroment using appropriate garden elements.

When it's a penthouse terrace, a sculpture or fountain and a single plant may suffice. By the shore it's giant mounds of grass waving in the sea breeze. In a wooded setting by a mountain stream the emphasis is on rocks and water.

A number of sites are presented with sketches of the plans. Explanations, though very brief, are clear and helpful.

At times one can't help but feel that the book is a very large, expensive, illustrated cirriculum vitae for the landscape architects; but it is clearly much more. Their love of their art comes shining through. Don't miss the compendium of of 'favorite plants' at the end of the book.

And remember that fifteen years later one of the principles stated his regret that he'd planted quite so many rudbeckias.

Bones of the Earth, Spirit of the Land: The Sculpture of John Van Alstine will be of interest to working artists, as well as to all readers with an interest in contemporary art and the process of turning ideas into visual form. An extensive collection of color photographs (images of sculptures supplemented by drawings and landscape photographs, a less well-known aspect of his work) documents the evolution of Van Alstine's stone sculpture, from a smooth, polished Modernism to the aesthetic of raw, unfinished stone favored by Noguchi and the land-based Postminimalist strategies of Richard Serra. In the 1970s, he began assembling unworked stones, adding wood and metal to create works that respond to the landscape and allude to a narrative impulse beyond the rigors of form. His later works continue to synthesize stone and metal (the signature of Van Alstine's sculptural vocabulary), now throwing found objects, such as a fuel tank and anchor, into the mix. These recent sculptures move from a response to the landscape to an exploration of humanity's relation to the land through forms that evoke tools, vessels, and transport. The introductory essay by Nick Capasso reinforces the story told by the photographs, discussing the sculptures, public art commissions, and works on paper. Here we learn of Van Alstine's early memories of stone and his various personal experiences of the landscape-whether in the Adirondack Mountains of his childhood or in Laramie, Wyoming, where he taught in the '70s. Capasso provides a succinct and informative discussion, guided by the principle that for Van Alstine "stone is everything," and shows an acute sensitivity to the artist's feeling for his chosen materials and the nuanced changes in their treatment over the years. Van Alstine also has the opportunity to speak for himself in an interview with Glenn Harper, Editor of Sculpture magazine. (Another version of the interview appeared in the May 2000 issue of Sculpture.) In this illuminating discussion of materials, process, and content, the artist identifies key technical realizations and pivotal conceptual leaps behind the changes in his work. Harper draws out several fascinating explanations of the layered meanings underlying the abstractions and found objects in Sledge (1992) and Ara (1989). Bones of the Earth as a whole gives a detailed portrait of an artist committed to his materials, his craft, and his place in the real landscape. Its pages reveal Van Alstine's unique mediation between, in Capasso's words, "image, object, and place."

A summary of his statement on p. 125 on "Russell's Mathematical Logic" describes the "vicious circle principle: forbids a certain kind of circularity which is made responsible for the paradoxes. The fallacy in these, so it is contended, consists in the circumstance that one defines (or tacitly assumes) totalities, whose existence would entail the existence of certain new elements of the same totality, namely elements definable only in terms of the whole totality." This led to the formulation of a principle which says that "no totality can contain members definable only in terms of this totality, or members involving or presupposing this totality." (The vicious circle principle). (Also a "not applying to itself principle to keep the vicious circle principle from applying to itself p. 126

In describing Russell's theory of types he says, "The paradoxes are avoided by the theory of simple types which is combined with the theory of simple orders - a "ramified hierarchy""

Godel argues that the vicious circle principle is false rather than that classical mathematics is false.

p. 202 "A remark about the relationship between relativity theory and idealistic philosophy (1949a) (Note that this view supports my usual presentations in class on this!)

"The argument runs as follows: Change becomes possible only through the lapse of time. The existence of an objective lapse of time 4, however, means (or, at least, is equivalent to the fact) that reality consists of an infinity of layers of "now"

p. 203 which come into existence successively. But, if simultaneity is something relative in the sense just explained, reality cannot be split up into such layers in an objectively determined way. Each observer has his own set of "nows", and none of these various systems of layers can claim the prerogative of representing the objective lapse of time. 5"

"The Death Penalty : A Debate" is an excellent introduction to the topic for two primary reasons. First, it presents the two main opposing view points argued well by experts on the subject, so regardless of your own position you need not fear that the book is biased. Second, it covers the subject thoroughly, addressing each issue individually, and relying on facts to support claims. This means, after reading this book, you'll have plenty of ammunition the next time you want to argue the subject with someone esle.

Like the more famous Schaum's Outline series, the Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (HBJ) series explains the topics covered in outline form, show you examples that the writers have worked out to illustrate the appropriate theory, and also give you questions to test your knowledge.

This is where this series singles itself out for me. First, the supplementary questions have the answers so that you can check your understanding. Also, the book includes unit exams and a final exam, all of which have an answer key. This helps me build my confidence in working through the material of discrete structures.

This is a very helpful book.