A boy of old Prague is set in the sixteenth century in Prague. The story is told by Tomas, a Gentile boy, who is bonded to a old man who is Jewish. There is alot of injustice and predjudice practiced against the Jews of Prague, who are restricted to a ghetto. Tomas - from a poor farming family, discovers that what is said about the Jewish people are not true and is witness to terrible actions carried out against the people living in the ghetto by the Gentiles. The illustrations by Ben Shahn are dark and brooding. Read it if you can find it!

I was given this catalog recently as a holiday gift. I didn't know much about Shahn's late works. This catalog provides ample illustrations, discussion of key late paintings, as well as considers the importance of Shahn's ethnic heritage and involvement with the Left during the 1930s. A great look at a favorite painter.

This collaboration between the posthumous words of Ranier Marie Rilke and the drawings of Ben Shahn slows the pace of Rilke's hauting verbal images as one steps into the sanctity of Shahn's graphic images of one man's life. Each step along the pilgrim's path is exquisitely described by Shahn's primal lithographs. Birth, Attachment, Travel, Wonder, Illness and Death as described simply but poignantly by Rilke are transformed into stages of devotion in the search for a single verse. Life itself becomes the metaphor for the poet's calling, and the artist captures the awe and anxiety of the transformation. This is a book you'll want to hand on to your children for generations to appreciate such a collaboration.

This book was dull and I would not recommend it to someone who is not a fan of Ben Shahn and his work.

This book is one of the clearest explanations of the creative process of an artist available anywhere. Shahn speaks of painting, of course, but his lucid, interesting text, his ideas and explorations, apply to artists in any field. Highly recommended.

Ben Shan's "The Shape of Content" in many ways truly defines the thinking of artists in a time that might be considered the height of modern american painting and art. It is an enormously human and genuine dialogue on art of the fifties. Few books so clearly establish how and why one becomes an artist. It is written with soul, intelligence, and great humanism while totally avoiding the sophistry of the critics and journalists writing about art at that time in American society. A great book!

Wonderful images and excellent catalogue of Ben Shahn's 1930s photographs.

Exhibition currently on display at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC.

probably, because he was sober; an aria rather than a jazz riff.

This is a most unusual book, of interest chiefly as that rarest of literary objects, a manifesto of pessimism. Dahlberg's intent seems to have been as much to display his bulging erudition and arch, archaic way with words as to decry man's slavery to the sexual urge. His ostensible subject is often buried beneath an avalanche of classical, historical, and anthropological allusions, but at least the book is riddled with eccentric epithets along the lines of "Man is double, and who may know his heart: he is a moral hermaphrodite." The author's tone is judgmental and defiant throughout, but that doesn't energize the book. The tedium of reading finally overwhelms any interest his oblique approach might provide, and there are no illuminating observations about the eternal itch, merely a catalogue of references to Greek gods, Mayan myths, and "primeval potherbs."

Get me another scotch and turn on the lava lamp! I started reading this one, and then started thumbing around from front to back, and I still don't know what is going on -- but it was sure interesting while it lasted!

I found this book at a library book sale, so excuse me for not knowing anything about its literary pretensions or context.

WARNING, right off: You will have no idea what this book is about unless you take a class on this guy, which is probably unlikely, or have an odd, non-Hefnerian view of sex. Or if you're the sort to sit in a tweed blazer and monocle and snicker alone late at night over the Discovery channel with one hand down your pants.

When an author starts off by telling you unabashedly that he's going to use the whole range of the English vocabulary going back to the Elizabethans, whether you know what he's talking about or not, and then goes off to frolic around in weird, wordy and highly literary word-acrobatics about copulation and who-knows-what, you know you've gotten into something not exactly "summer reading."

I'm not sure who this book was intended for (from the intro, I'd say no-one), but it's always good to have it on your shelf, especially if the title is prominently displayed, and you can pull it out periodically and read vague and archly erudite chuckles about pudenda and whatnot.

As for "misanthropic," well, ya got me there. Really, that's just nitpicking with a book this weird.