This book is a nice overview of the work and life of Matisse. There are many beautiful and brilliantly described colorplates. It is a complete overview of his work. It also makes a beautiful coffee table piece that may inspire conversation.

I reasoned that because the author choose to feature a later piece by Matisse on the cover the book might emphasize his later work. But when I got the book his later work was only briefly talked about and only 2 of the colorplates were after 1940s.

Overall it is a nice book to get a sense of Matisse, his work and his life.

I noticed that this is coming back into print in November 2002, so I figured I'd write this review. If you are a fan of Matisse, you should snap up this book. It is an awesome achievement by Mr. Schneider. There is a tremendous amount of biographical data here, as well as a wealth of reproductions- both color and black and white. One caveat, though. This is definitely not for the casual reader! There is a lot of detailed analysis of the paintings included- such things as Matisse's theories on the use of color and shape; the tremendous amount of work and thought that went into each work in order to create color harmony and a balance of all the pictorial elements, etc. Mr. Schneider respects the reader, so some of this stuff can be a real challenge! But I found it very worthwhile! Matisse's paintings are deceptive, at least to the layperson. They seem soothing and simple. Well, I can promise you that after reading this wonderful book you may still find the paintings soothing, but when you realize what went into the process of creating them you will never again think of them as being simple! This is one of those rare books that opens your eyes and makes you look at something in a completely new way.Reviewer Note: Please be aware that the book I am reviewing is the over 700 page book written by Pierre Schneider, NOT the much shorter book written by Mr. Jacobus and only translated by Mr. Schneider!

This oversized volume documents a retrospective exhibition devoted to Matisse which was held at the Museum of Modern Art in late 1992 and early 1993. The largest Matisse exhibition ever staged, it is unlikely that this massive curatorial event will ever be repeated. For devotees of Matisse, this book is an essential addition to your library, although there is little here that has not been previously published and discussed many times in earlier exhibitions. I think this book is more useful for those individuals who have just been introduced to this artist's work - it is a marvelous one-volume survey, clearly organized into seven chronological sections covering the entirety of Matisse's life, and showcasing his finest pictures. For those readers looking for more than just reproductions, however, the book is less satisfying. Elderfield's introductory essay is virtually incomprehensible for anyone who isn't already familiar with the matisse literature, and is poorly coordinated with the catalogue itself - there is no discussion of the individual paintings actually in the exhibition, or their interrelationships. The chronology of the artist's life is useful, but no more than bare bones history. This book is chiefly a visual pleasure and a fine document of a great exhibition. However, having seen the exhibition myself, I must inform the reader that many of the photographs in the book were received from non-MOMA sources, and there are variations in quality among the images. The bulk of the reproductions are just too dark, lending Matisse's pictures a muddy look that they do not possess in reality. I wish someone had bothered to compare the photos to the paintings before they sent the book to press. Still, if you buy only one book on Matisse, this should be it.

This book goes through all of his different periods in his life; including many full-color plates which display the pictures described in the text. Definately a must have!

A bit dense in places but well, well worth the effort. A panoramic view of a social order in flux, indispensable to anyone wanting to know the origins of the modern 3-class social structure. Along the way, Pirenne argues that the Moslem conquests, rather than the barbarian invasions, explain the cessation of trade that cleared the path for the institutions of feudalism. (Feudalism, of course, was the social structure under which Roman Catholicism was able to apply it's deadly, deadening stranglehold on the western world.)

This is a groundbreaking work in the study of the so-called "Dark Ages." Pirenne, one of the great scholars and historians of the 20th century, discovered that the economic destitution of Western Europe during the 8th, 9th, and 10th centuries was a consequence, not of the barbarian invasions, as is commonly supposed, but of the Islamic presence in the Mediterranean. The astonishing advance of Islam into Northern Africa, Spain, and Syria during the 7th and 8th centuries meant that Western Europe lost control of the Mediterranean. It became, as Pirenne puts it, a "Moslem lake," and because of this, Western Europe found itself in what amounted to a state of virtual blockade. All the trading routes to the East were cut off and Gaul and other Western European countries were thrown back on their own resources. Bereft of the economic lifeblood of trade, cities shrunk into insignifance. Marseilles, once a thriving seaport, became a ghost town. The Middle Class ceased to exist. Complete autarky reigned in the West. The economic devestation was so bad that Charlemagne's government could not collect any taxes. All of Charlemagne's revenues came from his own estates.

In "Medieval Cities," Pirenne not only sketches the economic disintegration of Western Europe, he also details the revival of trade and the emergence of a flourishing medieval civilization in the 10th, 11th, and 12th centuries. How did Western Europe pull itself out of the dark ages? Pirenne's brief answer is simple: by reclaiming control of the Mediterranean and thereby opening up sea routes to the East. With the formation of a new merchant class there arose cities and a new social class of great significance: the Middle Class, destined in the centuries to follow to lead Europe into the age of industrialism, democracy, and world supremacy.

Pirenne's work represents a milestone in historiography. Its central thesis about the main causes of the dark ages, which is accepted by European historians like Braudel, is greatly underappreciated here in America, where we find secularists and anti-religious zealots still spreading the lie that Christianity caused the dark ages. Pirenne, with his profound research and impeccable scholarship, tells us what really happened. An extremely important work--highly recommended.

De Lubac's work on the four-fold sense of Scripture is one that informs the reader of the history and the (very basic) method of biblical interpretation. His historical tracing of the method through the Fathers of the Church, particularly through Origen (including his discussion of the supposed "heresy" of Origen) is clear and, perhaps, the high point of this volume.

At times a bit dry, De Lubac tends to run on, burying the reader with countless examples. His scholarship is vast, but his presentation can be a bit overwhelming at times. Nonetheless, this book is, with good reason, a standard on the subject, and would be recommended for anyone -- Catholic or Protestant -- who wants to gain a deeper understanding of the trends in biblical interpretation that have developed in the process of bringing us to where we are today.

_Medieval Exegesis_ by Henri de Lubac is a four volume work in the Ressourcement (retrieval and renewal) series of Catholic thinkers. This book is the first volume of that work translated from the French. The Ressourcement movement within Roman Catholicism consisted of several important thinkers who attempted to retrieve and renew Catholicism by returning to its earliest Christian sources. These thinkers included individuals such as Henri de Lubac as well as Jean Danielou, Yves Congar, Marie-Dominique Chenu, Louis Bouyer, and were associated with the famous theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. Their movement played an important role in the theological developments of the Second Vatican Council and influenced the work of Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

This first volume of _Medieval Exegesis_ attempts to trace the origins of the fourfold interpretation of Holy Scripture (interpretations of Scripture in terms of history, allegory, anagogy, and tropology). The book focuses on hundreds of different early and medieval Christian thinkers and especially the work of the early Christian Platonist Origen who devised this fourfold means of interpretation. The book discusses fully the nature of interpretation ("the Queen of the Arts") and the need for spiritual discipline in the light of patristic theology. The book then turns its attention to the patristic sources including Clement of Alexandria, Saint Augustine, Gregory, Cassian, and Eucher, but especially Origen. The book fully explores Origen as understood in both the Greek and Latin churches and deals with the troublesome issue of his alleged heresy. For quite some time, a debate existed in the church as to the status of Origen's soul due to his drift into heresy concerning certain aspects of biblical interpretation. This book restores Origen's place among early theologians and especially his fourfold sense of mystical interpretation of Scripture. The book concludes with a discussion of the unity of the two testaments: Old Testament and New Testament. As many of the saints had testified to, the Old Testament reveals the New, and the New Testament is revealed in the Old. The author concludes with a final discussion of the need for the Spirit to enlighten the exegesis of Scripture. This book (expertly footnoted with reference to many Christian thinkers) provides an excellent introduction to the thought of Henri de Lubac as well as to the understanding of scriptural exegesis and interpretation as it existed in the medieval world and as it is proclaimed still today.

This book has some really amazing photography, they have a really powerful message. I like photos that make me feel something and Robert Capa's photos difinatly do that. Robert Capa was in the right place and the right time with alot of his photos. The only thing the book lacked i feel is more background on the photos.

Ordinary people caught under extraordinary circumstances are what give these images the power that they have and elicit pure empathy from the viewer. Robert Capa earned his place in photographic history and left behind a body of work for us to consider...

Not the best Oakes novel but pretty darn close. Buckley's intrepid hero must survive the Kennedy administration (there's a challenge for Buckley's alter ego!). The author squanders a bit of his considerable wit on the oval office's occupants...his contempt for camelot drips off the pages. Still, the story of Tod is absorbing and compelling.

Henri Tod is a German Jew who survives the Death Camps and becomes Germany's leading Freedom fighter. His sister survives in the Soviet Union and becomes a pawn in an East Block effort to secure Tod's capture. Thrown into this mix is a curious East German duo that stow away in a relic German railcar and play crucial roles in the tableau. And, of course there's Blackford Oakes. Oakes's mission is to infiltrate the Bruderschaft (Tod's organization) in an effort to learn of its intentions. All this occurs, of course, during the days leading up to the building of the Berlin Wall.

As with most Oakes installments, the action is scarce and the wit is everywhere. The story unfolds at a pedestrian pace...and that's OK. Buckley's authority on the period is unquestionable. Most of the subplots are attended to nicely. And the author does a fine job of placing his protagonist in a position where his choices would have significant consequences for world events.

Delicious fare, highly recommended.

This is the fifth of Buckley's spy novels that I've read, and the best so far. By weaving together fiction and history, he brings alive the Cold War era. The prose is uniquely Buckleyan, by turns witty, moving, and heart-racing. I recommend this book.

Bergson's works are always inspirational and the remarkable thing is that he doesn't assume anything he always explains what is needed (almost always) unlike the standard treatises on philosophy by other philosophers. It is never that much of an effort to read Bergson and as such it makes his works far more accessible than usual for a philosopher, probably one of the reasons he was all the rage in the early 20th Century, people can actually understand what he was talking about. What is the reason for this ? I think much of it has to do with his unwillingness to separate his insights into distinct pieces as is the norm in philosophy. His essays tend to flow along nicely without being stuck in difficult terminology which must be remembered as you progress, anything such as the word duration which has a special significance in Bergson work becomes part of the flow of the essay rather than being in any way special it is always reinforced through the dialogue. Another interesting aspect is his lack of references to others, possibly a result of the French way of Education which encourages self reliance and expression as much as possible.

In this work, one of his earliest (1887), Bergson introduces his concept of duration which is less of a concept than a real lived sense that is happening in your life right at this moment. But first he introduces the reader to the intensities of psychic states such as beauty, grace, joy, sorrow, pain etc and how a misinterpretation of real lived experience gives rise to a way of philosophy which separates real duration as it is experienced into space-like time, this is also evident in feelings which are modified through the space-like construction of experience. Although this first chapter fails to convince once you proceed onto the construction of the idea of duration you feel on much safer ground, one feels Bergson has seriously studied this phenomenon, not of course just in thought or conceptualisation but, in his own lived experience present at every moment. He goes on to explain the falseness of the spacialisation of time which inevitably leads to the paradoxes of Zeno in ancient days and determinism with its lack of human freedom. He overcomes the usual arguments of determinism by simply just not defining freedom or its prior conditions since this would once again introduce determinism and spacialise duration.

Bergson's work is simply highly insightful of the human condition far more than any dry attempt at it through the usual approaches such as Descarte's or Kant's. He literally lives his work using his own experience to enliven it, I mean literally enliven it, Bergson's work is living in a sense. It is less an argument than a movement through your own feelings and intuitions which then allow you to understand what he is saying, it isn't difficult concepts you can't wrap yourself round. It does occasionally suffer from a lack of clarity wich is an advantage other philosophers have over him but a careful reading will help.

Superb as always.

Bergson, all the rage in the early 1900's, has now been rediscovered,thanks in part to the work of Deleuze et al. Time and Free Will is a great exemplar of Bergson's work and his idea of the duree and the spatialization of time. Bergson presents to the reader an energetic flux which is the precondition of our more vulgar concept of time. With this flux, the past is pulled along by the future and presented to consciousness in the present as a heterogeneous conglomeration, inseperable and uncategorizable. It is this work which inspired the stream of consciousness novelists, especially Proust. But the most remarkable element of Time and Free Will is its demand on the reader to live the duree, to return to the duree and forget oneself in it. The goal is freedom and authenticity and this can only be achieved when letting oneself go, flying like a bird, and despatializing time. This book does not only open the door to phenomenology, but it also contributes in a significant way to french existentialist thought.

Under Fire (along with Remarque's All Quiet...) remains for me one of the most powerful descriptions of the madness and horror of war that I've ever read. What I found most compelling in Barbusse's novel is the author's use of language in describing "the tortured earth" during a passage in which French troops are being shelled. The author introduces you to a score of characters whom you really get to know as you experience the unspeakable conditions under which they are forced to survive and fight. One hesitates to use the term beautiful in referring to descriptions of carnage and agony but I can think of no other way to convey the power and, yes, poetry of his words. His language is clear-graphic-the "scenes" are enormously vivid. It would, in the hands of a competant director-one with vision- make a great film particularly if done in black/white! A great book written with sympathy towards those victims who are asked to participate in the insanity of war.

Amazing, sweeping, a black and white word picture of the nightmare of trench warfare. I read this book in the Univ. of Arizona library in stages from 1997-99 not for a class, not for a term paper, but merely BECAUSE IT WAS THERE. Barbusse is a poet when the shells are falling at 3:00 am, he is a priest when an appeal to Mon Dieu is needed to save a friend horribly wounded. How someone could compose something this flowing, with this kind of rhythm, even as the Hun is rushing another muddy trench, is amazing to me. He must have attained some altered state, some semi-divine detachment, when composing the lyrics that actually describe a nightmare you can't wake up from; or what most other people called World War I. Yet so many will have nothing to do with this type of literature, it's about war and therefore turns off automatically the majority of readers, and essentially all of the female type. But that is their loss - the book ends with a gasp at hope no matter how dark the sky; there is a ray of sun peeking through even the Germanic cloud of Destruction. This can be an example for all of our hopes whether one is surrounded by an actual battle or a conflict of one's own making.

This is a great idea for a book and a great gift. For some months, I have trolled through ebay and Amazon auctions, clicking on but never buying copies of old standard and Jewish postcards. The co-author of this book has one of the largest archives of Jewish postcards and images, and he has compiled them into this amazing collection of old Shtetl and Jewish life postcards. They provide the reader with an glimpse of what the Yiddish world was like and what images people wanted to retain. In the words of Gerard Silvain, "Collecting of postcards has become the second largest type of collection in the world...More moving than any other type of collection for the Jew in search of his roots, the postcard collection is still little known by the general public.

This extraordinary book describes that place known as Yiddishland through a f a collection of postcards from many geographical and cultural corners of the world. Whether Yiddishland is real or mythical is unimportant: what is significant is that these photographs depict a place which no longer exists, but which was held together by the common thread of the Yiddish language. Each photograph is more stunning than the next with a never before seen images of the people, places and things that make up the Yiddish culture. Tears actually welled up when looking at some of these photos as I realized that this beautiful place from our pasts exists no more except here in these pages. This is a book is a great gift idea, and a must for anyone interested in photography, Yiddish culture or just plan beauty. I am so very happy that someone had the skill and courage to undergo this amazing project which speaks like a sparkling work of art.

Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is perhaps among the greatest books on censorship ever written. At times, it may seem heavyhanded in its approach, and the action, as some reviewers have pointed out may seem a little farfetched. Indeed, who can imagine firemen dousing homes in kerosene and setting them ablaze? But this is not where the value of the book lies. Its value lies in the warning about the type of society we may become, and perhaps already have. A society where serious thought, questioning, and insight are little valued for fear of causing societal unhappiness and where people coast along in life fed by a constant stream of meaningless and useless information via television, unchallenged in their concepts of life by thoughts that may trouble them.

We have now in our society a movement - political correctness - that is dominant on college campuses, a movement that seeks as its ultimate goal the suppression of any thought or idea that may in the least be offensive to another individual or group. In Fahrenheit 451 Fire Captain Beatty explains how Bradbury's society of the future came to burn books. Minorities of every stripe complained about how they were portrayed in this book or that book, tearing out page by page those sections that were offensive until the day when the "libraries were shut and minds closed forever."

There are further fewer active readers in American society today than 50 years ago. The great majority of Americans now have their worldview filtered to them through television, and children are raised on the offerings of mass entertainment from Disney and MTV. It is entertaining sometimes, but it is not the stuff of life. Fahrenheit 451 is indeed a prescient and frightening warning.

This is one of the finest books I have ever read, and certainly high in my ranking of Bradbury's novels. Bradbury paints a picture, in his very colorful way, of a completely governmentally-controlled society in which books are outlawed and television reigns over all. Guy Montag, a fireman (whose job description now involves burning illegal books), finds himself stuck in this mixed-up world, and eventually make a decision between what he knows and what he believes in, illustrating Bradbury's almost universal theme of conflict versus change. This novel is very applicable in today's society, even though it was written nearly fifty years ago, dealing with topics that are still active in the present. Bradbury provides a moral of sorts within this novel which conveys many of his deep-set beliefs, such disdain for television, hatred for censorship, and Bradbury's undeterrable love for books and the printed word. Very enlightening, reading this book will definitely cause one to think twice about many of today's common practices. A very thought-provoking and well-written novel; this book should be read by any fan of science fiction, if not everyone!

Did you notice that nowadays writers and filmmakers tend to make no difference between Horror and Science-Fiction? ... Real Science-Fiction plays not only in the future but in a society very different from ours and with people who have habits and a mentality which also are different from ours. Fahrenheit 451 is a very good example of that. Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature that makes books burn and this is the problem we are dealing with (and no longer in the far future I'm afraid). Guy Montag is the hero of the novel. He's a fireman who burns books that are in people's houses, usually because someone denounced them at the police. It's forbidden to read books because they make you think and therefore make you unhappy. (Clothes have only zippers and no buttons; buttons take to much time so you start thinking and once again this makes you unhappy.) But Montag is a lonely person who has no contact with his wife; she only watches TV from dawn till dusk. The irony is that all the measures, which are taken by the government to protect people from being unhappy only, make them more unhappy than before. As the story unfolds, Guy Montag starts wondering what books are all about and he starts meeting people who read books (without notifying his superiors). The novel ends in a peculiar way.
I said in the beginning that the problem is maybe no longer in the far future: a psychologist I know once said that all books ought to have a happy ending. I never asked her what would become of the books that don't have a happy ending because I'm afraid what she might answer.