Buchner, unknown to many readers, stands as one of the great prophets of literature. By predicting future literary movements and historical trends, Buchner stands at the head of some of the greatest literature of the modern world. His influence in the Theater of the Absurd, Existentialism, and the reaction against Hegelian idealism attest to his genius. Considered by many to be much too ahead of his time (maybe even still ahead of our time), his works are critical in understanding the modern mind. Mueller's translation is excellent and his introduction serves well in introducing the reader to the world of Buchner.

This thin volume contains the complete plays and writings of one of the most influential playwrights of modern drama. Though dead at the age of 23, Buchner is considered by many to be the progenitor of such varied schools of drama as Theater of the Absurd and Expressionism, Buchner stood years ahead of his time with the deep psychological treatment he gave his characters. All of his plays and his revolutionary political writings are included here. The Mueller translations are an essential addition to any dramatic library.

The first edition of Janet Drucker's Georg Jensen: A Tradition of Splendid Silver was published just four years ago, in 1997. Now, just a few breaths later, a revised and expanded second edition with an updated price guide is out. Given the impressive richness of the first edition, one might say,"So soon?" The first edition had gone out of print, but it would have been more usual at this remove to reprint it without revisions. The reasons are not especially apparent at first glance; the jacket design(and the jacket advertising copy) has barely changed, the general organization and graphic design of the first edition have been retained in the second, and the number of pages is about the same. When one sits down with both editions and begins to compare them page by page, the differences quickly become apparent. A very large amount of new material has been added into the new book, including 250 new images and expanded archival information on production and designers. Since the publication of the first edition, so much previously unavailable material came to light that its inclusion seemed paramount.
No matter how long and fully one has worked on a research project in the arts, as soon as one publishes, more material, often keenly interesting material, appears in response to the publication. A study of the second edition's acknowledgements suggests that the beauty and inclusiveness of the first edition brought the suthor new contacts with other dealers, collectors, museum curators, auctioneers, and other specialists, each of whom had something wonderful to add to the story.
In the case of the new photographs in the second edition, many previously unlocated Jensen pieces turned up. Some pieces illustrated in the first edition only in rather murky old catalogue or magazine photos became available for new color photography. Additional historical photos surfaced as well. The net gain of images in the new book is(by my count) just over two hundred color and black-and-white images overall. That the new addition is physically about the same size as the old one owes to a meticulous reworking of the layout on perhaps half the pages in the book. There was enough "air" (unused white space) in the basic design of the text pages for the first edition to accommodate many more photos in the second edition without choking the graceful layout of the book.
One of the most important innovations of the second edition is also easily overlooked in a casual inspection, and it will prove very useful to collectors and dealers in understanding Jensen product. The photo captions now include all Jensen design numbers that were stamped on their items of jewelry and hollowware, along with the trademarks and other marks on the back and bottoms of the pieces(only some of these were available to the author for the first edition) All Jensen jewelry and hollowware items were so marked, except for special-order pieces, and much of the earliest flatware was also marked in this way. As in the first edition, there is a full explanation of the marking system near the end of the book. Other important additions to the book are more readily apparent. These include complete reprints of the Jensen illustrated flatware catalogues for the Cactus(flatware pattern 30) and Acorn (flatware pattern 62) patterns, and for the so-called"Unique Serving Pieces". These include seventy-two ornamental serving utensils in a variety of numbered patterns not matching the full-line flatware patterns. The new edition also includes both chronological and production data for all of the sterling silver designs of Henning Koppel that were produced for the Jensen company. The Value Reference Guide has also been updated. This guide is not based on opinion but consists of actual auction records from sales in the major American and British houses over the past decade.
Given that the first edition had been sold out before public demand for the book had subsided, a reprinting would have been welcome enough. Both the author and the publisher are to be congratulated for instead producing this most significant and valuable revised and expanded second edition. I am glad to recommend it to owners of the first edition along with the ever-expanding group of collectors of Jensen"estate" silver who were not able to obtain the orginal book.

Collectors of jewelry of any type now have another acquisition for which to long. It's a signature piece, finely detailed, a valued addition to any serious collection. It is a jewel indeed, but you may not find it at the jewelers. It's a creation of Janet Drucker and it should stand the test of time, for Drucker has crafted Georg Jensen A Tradition of Splendid Silver into a splendid guidebook.

Not a dry tome, crackling with boredom, this book offers an at once scholarly treatise on Jensen amd a readable reference as well. Drucker sets up the volume by putting Jensen's ascendency into prospective. She grounds him in his time period and explains the forces which created his work and appeal. Not settling for another long line of picture strewn collection catalogs, she introduces the reader to Jensen's life story in a well written and very readable text. Next the collector's delight: the litany of his accomplishment.

Chapters are devoted to his jewelry, his holloware and his flatware. Then Drucker offers the benediction with a look at Jensen's worldwide legacy. But don't stop there, because the appendix offers the musuem collections of the master and a listing of the artists whose work built the Jensen line.

Now, lest you think this book is a must for scholars only, rest assured the exquisite photography and the easy to read captioning will make this gem a perfect adornment for your home library. If you know Jensen or not, Georg Jensen A Tradition of Splendid Silver will be splendid for you.

Bearing in mind Derrida's honey-like style, with which both writes and absents himself, this book shows that in Truth Hegel is the last philosopher of the book and the first thinker of writing owing to his entirely transgressive relationship with his sister (whom he loved) by virtue of the influence of Genet's oeuvre (which is not a work), the latter clearly touching Hegel for the simple reason that his avatars and demons (Sartre, Bataille) misrecognized him, as though he were the sun which they dared not look upon for fear of blindess. The rose pricks the eagle and the eagle tumbles.

Bearing in mind the sweet honey of Derida's style, with which he writes and absents himself, we can say that Derrida has shown Hegel to be the last philosopher of the book and the first thinker of writing by the economic grace of his utterly perverted relationship with his sister, starting with the B column on Genet, who was misconstrued by Bataille and so by Sartre. The rose pricks the eagle.

Inter allya

It is amazing how someone can write so clearly about such and an obscure book. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit has unfortunatly been dismissed by many as simple foolishness. Forster's book, however, is excellent at destroying this view. Put Hegel's Phenomenology on one knee and this book on the other. When you read Hegel you forehead will crinkle up and you will stare blankley at pages. "Huh" Then reading Forster, your forehead will relax "Oh, I see" The combination of the two makes for a great journey into the realm of new and exciting ideas. Forster has allowed me to appreciate the great mind of Hegel that otherwise would have remained unknown to me. Outstanding book.

Eight years ago, I began a daily exercise of copying one page of Hegel's Phenomenology into a word processor and then rewriting and distilling it until I could go no further. One hundred and fifty pages later, I gave up. Michael Forster has provided a perspicuous view of the Hegelian landscape I was (often blindly) crawling over. I'm grateful.

Alan Patten's presentation of Hegel's political philosophy is developed in what he calls the "civic humanist" reading. This is a welcome addition to the literature on Hegel scholarship focusing on the issue of freedom. This book was very helpful for my own research and was a true pleasure to read because it is written in a style of prose familiar to contemporary philosophers trained in the analytic tradition, it links Hegel's ideas more closely with those of Kant, and places Hegel within the more mainstream tradition of political theory. Patten's discussion of Hegel's discussion of property rights is especially interesting. Most important, this study places Hegel within a line of thought that is remarkably similar to the civic republican tradition (which is probably why Patten favors a 'civic humanist' reading). Taken together, Patten re-emphasizes the central importance of Hegel's thought for more contemporary political philosophy.

People who avoid Hegel because of his highly specialzied terminology or simply dismiss him as irelevant would do well to read this tightly argued work.

This book was awarded the Best First Book Award from the Foundations of Political Theory section of the American Political Science Association. The award citation reads: "Alan Patten's Hegel's Idea of Freedom is an impressive intellectual achievement very much deserving of the Foundations of Political Theory First Book Prize. Written in vivid but jargon-free prose, Hegel's Idea of Freedom offers a philosophically rigorous account of the central place of the concept of freedom in Hegel's political theory, rightly underscoring the manner in which Hegel's complex discussion of Sittlichkeit (Ethical life) plays a pivotal role in the German philosopher's thinking about western modernity. Although hardly uncritical of Hegel, Patten provides a cautiously supportive exegesis of Hegel's interpretation of the modern world and its core institutions. Patten not only shows how Hegel's argument represents a judicious defense of the quintessentially modern quest to make freedom the central organizing principle of social and political life, but also why Hegel's theoretical framework provides him with the resources necessary to defend key aspects of modernity against critics of many different political and philosophical persuasions. Without overstating his claims, Patten provocatively suggests that Hegel still speaks to contemporary political theory in a host of interesting ways. Patten's book not only revisits Hegel's ideas about many traditional issues in political theory (for example, property and the social contract), but it also offers an excellent critical discussion of major attempts within recent philosophy (for example, in the work of Charles Taylor) to rely on Hegel for contemporary purposes. By emphasizing a side of Hegel's political philosophy often neglected by both sympathizers and detractors, Patten also makes an important contribution towards revising standard accounts of Hegel's place within the history of modern political thought."

This book is a powerful reminder of a time we should never forget. In 1941 a German soldier Willy Georg went into the Warsaw Ghetto and took some pictures. Without meaning to he documented for history what life was like for the Jews in the Polish Ghetto before it was raised to the ground by the Nazis and most of its occupants massacred. Willy Georg is not a hero, he did nothing to help the people of the Ghetto, all he did was prove that they had existed at all. This book is tragic as it is magnificent. The accompanying text is concise and well written, showing the reader along with the photos how people lived and died in Warsaw during the early 1940s. This book should be on every library shelf and every school from Junior to High should have access to it. Sometimes pictures can speak louder than words and in this case it is more than true.

The origin of this book is in of itself remarkable. In the summer of 1941, Willie Georg (a German soldier stationed in Warsaw), was given a pass by his commanding officer that allowed him to enter the Warsaw Ghetto--a 1.36 square mile area into which 500,000 Jews had been packed. "There are some curious goings-on behind that wall," said the officer. "Take your [camera]...and bring back some photos of what you find." George did this, but the photographs he took have waited over five decades to see publication. Jewish scholar Rafael F. Scharf has collected these poignant, powerful images into a volume supplimented by excerpts from the diaries of Warsaw Ghetto Jews. The result is a book that brings the past to life with vivid and literally painful clarity. The Ghetto was deliberately created by the Nazis as a place for Jews to slowly died from hunger, cold and disease. (Georg's photos were taken a little less than a year before the death camps opened for large-scale business.) Every page is an portrait--in words or pictures--of people the reader knows almost certainly died before the war ended. It's impossible to look at these images without feeling a sense of loss on a purely human level. Old men, women, children, their faces gaunt with hunger, are seen still struggling to live a life of sorts, but it is clearly a struggle they are losing. IN THE WARSAW GHETTO is a reminder that every person who suffered and died under the Nazi regime was a fellow human being--that each and every one of those deaths was an ineffacable tragedy.

I came across this book wandering through a bookstore in 1989. It had a section on Hegel's famous chapter on "Lordship and Bondage," and I thought Davis might have something interesting to add to my already considerable library on the subject. The academic sounding book title suggested a Ph.d thesis turned book or something from the mills of postmodernism, in those years grinding out mind-numbing book-length footnotes to Derrida et al.

Wrong, wrong, wrong! The pages showed an intellect and heart breathtakingly alive and engaged. Despite forbidding sounding chapter titles the prose was beautifully crafted and spoke to my life, my fears, my evasions. I found the book more akin to a sort of wisdom literature, maybe something Ralph Waldo Emerson could have written towards the end of the 20th Century. I read it 2-3 times. Gave it to friends along with advice to ignore the forbidding title and titles to sections.

Later I searched academic journals for reviews and, as I had expected, found none. There is something discomfiting about Davis' book. Maybe Davis meant to scratch your conscience, grapple with intellectual and emotional honesty and courage, put a tack in life's chair -- do those things, that is, that tend to not get one the big symposia at the academic conference. I'm not sure what Davis meant to do, but I have never read such engaged presentations of the likes of Hegel, et al, that so gently yet so relentlessly made me look at the question of how I live.

So, wandering through the Amazon.com jungle, I was greatly encouraged to see that, 12 years later, Davis' book is still available. Give it a try.

In my not-so-humble opinion, Walter Davis's Inwardness and Existence is the most important work of philosophy since Sartre's Being and Nothingness. In this book Davis attempts an astonishing synthesis of 4 seemingly irreconcilable schools of thought: Hegel's self-consciousness, Heidegger's Existentialism, Marxist concepts of ideology and subjectivity, and Freudian psychoanalysis. His goal is a comprehensive and intellectually rigorous theory of "subjectivity," of what we are and how we got that way. Along the way he finds time to write a prose Ode to Death, explore the psychological mysteries of sexuality, provide the best explanation ever written of the Marxist concept of ideology, and intellectually skewer the phony "radical" Professors of academic deconstruction. This is a profound, challenging, wide-ranging book that deserves to be read, re-read, argued with, and discussed. "Put down thy Derrida; open thy Davis!"

In Journeys To Selfhood: Hegel & Kierkegaard, Mark Taylor charted the historical background of philosophy through establishing a creative dialogue between two the 20th Century's most influential philosophers. Hegel and Kierkegaard defined the poles between all significant modern and post-modern theologies ranging from Kierkegaardian neo-orthodoxy to Hegelian "death-of-God" theology, from Hegelian phenomenology and structuralism to Kierkegaardian deconstruction and post-structuralism. This new edition of a classic study, enhanced with an extensive bibliography and index, will be a welcome addition to contemporary philosophy and theology reading lists for students and scholars.

In Journeys To Selfhood: Hegel & Kierkegaard, Mark Taylor charted the historical background of philosophy through establishing a creative dialogue between two the 20th Century's most influential philosophers. Hegel and Kierkegaard defined the poles between all significant modern and post-modern theologies ranging from Kierkegaardian neo-orthodoxy to Hegelian "death-of-God" theology, from Hegelian phenomenology and structuralism to Kierkegaardian deconstruction and post-structuralism. This new edition of a classic study, enhanced with an extensive bibliography and index, will be a welcome addition to contemporary philosophy and theology reading lists for students and scholars.

This is an excellent book, even for those without background knowledge of the topic. It is thorough, and easy to understand. I was introduced to the topic in my college class, and have learned a great deal more, in detail in this book. This is an excellent selection for students, professionals, and people with a natural interest in the subject.

Right from the start, this book fascinated me. The authors write in a clear and concise manner that is both easy to understand and interesting; it's simply filled with data and concepts and I would highly recommend this book for anyone interested in neuroscience.

I am close to anthroposophy for more than twenty yaers. I felt steps of some wisdom in this teaching and admired e.g. Waldorf schools. But I was afraid of the personality cult of Steiner. Whatevere query the replay was as such: Doktor Steiner hat gesagt (Doctor Steiner said). This book shows anthroposophy as a method not a doctrine. Nowhere in this book is said: It is so and so as Dr. Steiner said it. It looks like a smart and creative reading of nature and humane world.

_The Marriage of Sense and Thought_ is by a team of science teachers headed by Steven Edelglass. It's a philosophical (and experimental) attack on the assumptions ("secondary qualities," "res cogitans," "mechanism," "objectivity," etc.) that lead people to those epistemologies that remove the human body from nature and cause utter bafflement in the face of things like wave-particle complementarity and quantum vacuum potentials - not to mention something as everyday as color. These same mi