Robert Irwin is a wonderful artist, and this is a must-read for anybody interested in his work, or in his West Coast brand of conceptualism. But this book is also a fantastic biography in its own right - Weschler, who now works for the New Yorker, writes like an angel, and reading this book is a pleasure indeed. To say that this is one of the best biographies of an artist ever would be far too faint praise: this is one of the best biographies ever, period.

This was an amazing read. Not only did it open my eyes to the concept of abstract art, but it opened my eyes to a different way of thinking. I highly recommend this book.

Whether you know Irwin's work or not, are an art afficionado or not, this is a great read for the curious and perceptually
aware.Weschler translates visual concepts into easily understandable language. His writing is clear and insightful and never falls into boring art jargon. This is no simple task for Irwin's work which is all about looking is not necessarily transferable on paper, but ultimately Weschler's writing does it justice. Weschler gives insight not only into the mind and heart behind this work but the personality that comprises Robert
Irwin. The book is like being in a restaurant and overhearing a really interesting conversation at the adjacent table so you don't resist the urge to eavesdrop and you stay and listen 'till the end.

This is a beautiful book that must be read over and over during different times in one's life. It is uncompromising and honest. It is about people, not characters. It will deliver as much as the reader is willing to receive.

This book reads like a work of journalism. It was good because it explained the economic and social conditions that spawn totalitarian regimes and military takeovers. Very good bibliography if you want to further your study. Good Interviews. Very Thorough and Fair. More than I would have been. Names, Dates, and the history behind the story is always given.

An incredible book that describes a few horrific cultures of dictatorship that will hopefully be forever unrecognizable to people in the United States. The most fascinating parts of the book are the theories of how the dicatorships came to be (the Tupamaros in Uruguay and the backlash of the military, etc.); even more incredible is how the leaders of the respective dictatorships stayed in power out of necessary compromises with the government(some are still in power, which will be difficult to swallow after reading this book). It is, in the end, a hopeful book with a warning: "¡Nunca más!" The book asks "how do you come to terms with those that tortured?" (especially in the incredible situation of passing someone who tortured you in the street, described by someone in the book) Another point the author makes is that there can be forgiveness after such horror, and if there's not there may just be more torture. A very worthwhile read, but not for the squeamish.

Lastly, the book provides a good introduction to a much neglected country: Uruguay. There are very few accounts in English of Uruguay, and this is probably the best I've seen. I have also visited Uruguay; it is a fascinating country and well worth a visit. You get a real appreciation for the friendliness of the people after reading what a lot of them went through during "la dictadura."

This is a magnificent book about a terrible subject. From the sixties through till the mid-Eighties, almost the entire continent of South America fell under the sway, or rather the boot, of military dictatorship. The dictatorships were, without exception but with varying degrees of vigour, active in torturing political prisoners. Weschler does a masterful job in describing the various forces that contributed to the overthrow of democracy throughout the Southern cone (not the least of which was American insistence on training Southern militaries and police forces in counter-insurgency in the hope that Castro's example would not spread further south), but the book's focus is not only the depravities of the two regimes -- Brazil and Uruguay -- but on the efforts of survivors of torture and imprisonment to make their oppressors see and recognise their evils.

The first section, 'A miracle, a universe' recounts the incredible efforts that went into collating and publishing the account Brasil: Nunca Mais (Brazil: Never Again), a book which set forth the policies of systematic torture and denial of due process practiced by Brazil's dictators. The truly remarkable aspect of the work was that all the material was obtained from the regime's own archives, over a period of several years, and at great personal risk to the authors. It's an inspiring story, and one that demonstrates the power of the written word.

The second and longer part of the book, 'The reality of the world', centres of the efforts of a committe in Uruguay to call those accused of torture during the country's decade-plus period of military dictatorship to account. In an effort to hasten reconciliation (or so they claimed), the civilian government declared an amnesty for those imprisoned for subversion under the old regime; later this amnesty was extended to those who tortured their political enemies. A group of concerned citizens began an exhausting referendum campaign to put the second amnesty to a vote. Weschler makes their task as exciting as a Hollywood thriller, without ever losing sight of the horror and tragedy which had been their inspiration. It's a beautifully structured, patient, and gorgeously written piece of work. An afterword makes some more general claims about the need to speak up on the subject of torture. 'The scream that comes welling out of the torture chamber is thus double -- the body calling out to the soul, the self calling out to others -- and in both cases, it goes unanswered. Torture's stark lesson is precisely that enveloping silence: it aims to take that silence and introject it back into its victim, to replace the flame of subjectivity with an abject, hollow void.' It is through reading books like Weschler's, and discussing and acting on his suggestions and the example of those in Brazil and Uruguay and elsewhere, that this silence can be partly drowned out. The book deserves -- indeed, demands -- a wide readership.

The photographs and engravings reproduced in Lawrence Weschler's book are poignant and riveting. They account for the 2 stars in my rating. And David Wilson is indeed a "national treasure," as is his unsettling museum. This book, however, seems to me a snide, yuppie's-eye-view of a truly original person and his meticulously wondrous contribution to the long history of the wonder-cabinet. I was depressed for quite a while after reading it to think that this condescending and anti-intellectual account would bear Wilson's mind and seditious achievements out into the world so much more frequently than would the Museum of Jurassic Technology itself, or its own publications. People fated to live out imaginatively impoverished lives in latter-day American society could use some capacity for self-loss in the face of what is other than ourselves or what we have mastered. And--perhaps less fundamentally, but in the interests of our being less boring to each other--we could use a less pervasive culture of knowingness. *Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder* brings that possibility forward only to smother it in a kind of smugly affectionate ridicule for the person who tried to give us a chance. I was particularly disappointed in that Weschler's 80s New Yorker piece about Boggs was both intriguing and respectful, and his original Harper's piece on Wilson at least showed honest curiosity. The book is a failure for a writer who had seemed to have an interesting mission. People interested in Wunderkammern of the past, as Wilson himself is and as Weschler's irrepressible condescension demonstrates he is finally not, should look at the catalogue of Dartmouth's Hood Museum exhibit and conference on them, edited by Joy Kenseth, *The Age of the Marvelous*; Paula Findlen's *Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy; Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park's *Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1100-1750*, and Rosamond Purcell and Stephen J. Gould's glorious *Finders, Keepers: Treasures and Oddities of Natural History*. All are profusely illustrated; Purcell's photographs in the last are works of art in themselves.

This remarkable book documents, in part, the extraordinary collection of the Museum of Jurassic Technology, a small storefront museum in Culver City, California. The MJT is something of an anomaly, existing in some strange territory between genuine (though odd) museum and performance art piece. As Weschler walks us through several of these exhibits, we are ultimately left in a wonderful state of suspension between credulity and skepticism, simultaneously unable to dismiss the museum as a joke and unable to accept its wonders without skepticism. At times, the experience is very much like reading BorgesÕ elaborately self-referential fictions; at other moments, it feels like youÕve wandered into a Pynchon novel in which a deeply strange and hidden world lies beneath the surface of the real.

The second part of the book places the MJT in the historical context of the wunderkammern of the 17th and early 18th centuries, those vast collections of natural and artificial curiosities that served as the first museums. The articulation of a profound sense of wonder is at the heart of WeschlerÕs fascinating book, which is in fact astounding in its elaboration of a world stranger than many found in fiction. Enthusiastically recommended.

I can't think of another book that has so altered my perception of how we process new information in a world full of unexpected and remarkable scientific "wonders." Are we easily duped? Are we natural non-believers or natural believers? Weschler really gets us going about objects found in the "Museum of Jurassic Technology" in L.A., then suddenly we're caught short - is the Director of the Museum kidding Weschler, just to prove a point about how gullible we are? Is WESCHLER making it all up? Is this book itself a curio from a "cabinet of wonder" and are we being asked to accept it as non-fiction? Does the Museum exist? (I even tried to find it in the L.A. phone book when I visited - couldn't find it. Curiouser and curiouser....does anyone out there know for sure?) This book made me want to go sit in on graduate-level classes in Museology - how do museum professionals really decide what information will go on those little cards next to the e! xhibits in museums? How easily convinced are we by the authority of those stark, compact little "explanations" that what we are seeing is what they tell us we are seeing - especially in situations where we have very little ability to check out the infomation? Can we believe the unbelievable? Should we? How do museums - how does anyone, really - manipulate the way information is delivered to the uninformed or the unconvinced? Weschler keeps his readers wonderfully off-balance about what he's describing - we are often half-way to believing impossible information because that information comes wrapped up with the bows & ribbons of an exclusive academic vocabulary. Weschler brings in the phenomena of "cabinets of wonder", brought back from the New World to the Old, full of objects which we know now to be real but which seemed marvelous and almost surreal at the time. This whole book is like a trip through a carnival House of Mirrors - you're just never quit! e sure that what you're seeing is real. Delightful and thou! ght-provoking in absolutely every way. And it's short to boot - no excuse not to sit right down and read it. Then read it again because you were so perplexed the first time through. Then give a copy to a friend.

I bought this collection from Amazon without any knowledge whatsoever of its contents or scope: I had read some Weschler pieces years and years ago with great profit, and after having randomly encountered his "Mr Wilson's Cabinet Of Wonder" recently, wanted to re-acquaint myself with his work. Imagine then my shock and delighted astonishment to find "Wanderer In The Perfect City" to be an almost complete re-issue of his "Shapinsky's Karma, Boggs' Bills," a beautifully made volume (printed by the North Point Press, seemingly defunct now, alas) of beautifully written "passion pieces," so-called in that they're focussed on artists singularly focussed (alternates: obsessed; crazed) upon a visionary (alt. quirky; really quirky) purpose that consumes and sustains their lives, their artistic being. A better review than this one would now list some examples of what I've just written, but unfortunately for you I'm only writing this review; and to be honest, a list of "those kooky artists and their kooky dreams!" would be a disservice to the sympathetic care Weschler employs in these portraits.

Reading the original edition of "Shapinsky's Karma, Bogg's Bills" was one of my watershed discoveries made at the time of life when everything is a discovery. "Shapinsky's Karma..." was an eye-opener for me, an inspiration; it was also the second hardcover book I'd ever bought, a weighty commitment for a boy like me, but a most fortuitous one. (The first hardcover I ever bought was "Heretics of Dune." _That_ wasn't nearly as inspirational.)

Coming across "Shapinsky's Karma..." again in this new form and fourteen years later, is therefore an occasion of some contemplation and a little rue: to remember the impressionable kid I first reading that beautifully blue tome; and to see it again in this perfectly fine edition, a little faded, a little dated. Some of its subjects who languished in relative obscurity back in 1988 have become well-known, like Boggs and Spiegelman; a great many others seem to have simply faded away. Perhaps this is an indirect demonstration of passion and its curatives, its flutterings and gutterings.

This new edition differs from the original in that the 1988 piece on Mark Boggs has been pulled; Weschler has expanded it into book-length. It's been supplanted with a piece on, I think, Ben Katchor, or whoever the "Mr. Knipl" cartoonist is.

In this book the author writes nonfiction articles about various interesting characters. He talks to an art promoter, a cartoonist and all sorts of others. The art promoter was an Indian who discover an unknown abstract expressionist in New York, and gets him know in the art world. It's a strange thing how it works out. There is something funky, and offbeat about all these characters, but what is really cool about the authors writing, is that it is very easy too imagine what these people are like. Very cool book.

The debate about what constitutes value has been tackled numerous times, but this may be the most humorous and interesting take on the subject. JSG Boggs shoves the question of value into our faces by drawing money and trying to pass it off - not as real money, but as real value. The book follows Boggs as he takes his "what is value" sideshow on the road, and into several court appearances. By the end, you'll see money in a whole new light as Boggs rides into the sunset with a pocket full of "cash."

The book loses its touch (and its uniqueness) when Mr. Weschler wanders into a generic discussion of the history of money. Overall, the author's treatment does just what it should - get out of the way and let Boggs paint a marvelous story.

It's honest, dispite the quasi-legal aspects of Mr. Boggs livelihood...the proof that the barter system still exists for intellectual property!

The story told in this book is fasccinating -- of a man whose art directly addresses the questions: what is money? what does money mean to us? how does money work? Boggs is an artist who creates beuatiful work, and does it in a way that it also drives to the heart of the American monetary system. The transactional part of his art is fascinating, and is told in an engaging amnner in this book.

The book suffers from being an enlargement of a fascinating article on the same subject. The borders between the original material and that added to make it a book-length piece are sometimes glaring. The book would have been more successful if the text were limited to the original article, and the collection of images were expanded.

this book is really well done, apart from the fact that there are a lot of covers shown from saul steinberg, but his MOST IMPORTANT one, the view from 9th ave westwards, is missing. this is a clear draw back of this book, and hence, since it's title is "cutting-edge covers", i think it only deseverves two stars.

This is a fitting supplement to the granddaddy of New Yorker cover books: The Complete Book of Covers of the New Yorker, put out by Knopf, which covers the NYer through 1989. This new volume mostly includes covers from the 90s, and many of the reproductions are big, sharp, and colorful. Covers are often grouped thematically (say, New Years covers), which lets you ponder the NYer's evolving style over the decades. There's even a section with a half dozen pull out covers, suitable for framing.

Some quibbles: editor Francoise Mouly is a bit precious in her introduction and conversation with Lawrence Weschler. Her take on the history of the NYer is a bit off in places; the book omits listing the arrival of EB White and Katherine White in its timeline(!), and she gives perhaps too much play to her husband/artist Art Spiegelman. One interesting aside, noted by others who have this volume: the old covers (mostly from the 30s) that she prints side-by-side with the work she commissioned in the 90s is almost always superior to these newer covers. A few new artists, such as Sempe and Spiegelman stand out; but most run a distant second to the likes of Arno, Thurber, and Steig from an earlier era. --robert luhn

I,m very much an avid fan and collector of New Yorker cartoon and illustrator art. Whilst this may bias my opinion it also, I think, makes me nerdishly critical. However, I have been completely won over by the beauty of this book. The quality of the reproduction is first class. It does focus on the 90s covers. However, I now have a renewed respect for Tina Brown et al for introducing a sharper commentry edge to the cover. I also like the rather individualistic choice of covers and the personal perspective of Francoise Mouly. I think we can allow her a little bias towards Art Speigelman - her partner (also he did after all produce the most profound cartoon book of all time in Maus). This is one of those books which raises a paradox - it will be thumbed through by old and young alike. There will be debates around its coffee table home about the relevant merits of this cover or that. But it is also a book which its owner (me!) wants to keep in pristine condition. A family heirloom indeed.

Weschler is a brilliant and amazing storyteller. I had followed his work closely in the New Yorker and other publications. Written like a novel, this book is a fascinating true-life look at three totalitarian regimes through the eyes of exiles who fought dictators in their own ways. The juxtoposition of the threee unrelated experiences provides some interesting insights into what totalitarianism is at its root and how it affects the people who live under its governance.