For the serious student of the French Revolution and the discourse surrounding it, Williams letters, along with the wealth of accompanying materials included in this volume, offer a fascinating insight. Kudos to the staff that assembled this piece of work.

Nicole is a normal non-religous woman who loves Jesus Christ. She speaks to Him, expects to hear back, and she does. Her impressions on hearing from God stay in line with Biblical truth and her portrayal of Jesus Christ not only as alive but also very real and that He is interested in daily affairs, made me want to speak to Him more often.

If you ever wondered if medieval poetry and the lives of the people who wrote it was in some way intimidating or academic, `The Mays of Ventadorn` provides a truely unique way of experiencing it. W.S. Merwin, in his charateristic style, brings to life Ventadorn (places and personalities) the center of the troubadour universe by weaving his own personal relationship with the region, the era and its poets. This book is a wonderful journey through Merwin's experience and how he has found value and meaning in the troubadours -- It will leave you wanting more poetry and a plane ticket to Southwest France.

My purpose in writing this review is a little different than usual. Normally I want to give some summary of what the author has written and offer a wee bit of criticism. With William Reddy's The Navigation of Feeling, I plan to take a different tack. I want to try to summarize this book cogently enough so that others want to read it and write their own reviews. This is a book that should be thoroughly discussed on the pages of [Amazon.com] and by more competent reviewers than myself.
Reddy's complex argument is presented in two parts. The first half of the book is a summation of research drawn from cognitive psychology, cultural anthropology, and contemporary philosophy in such a way as to present a new theory of emotions. Reddy's theory is designed to work our way out of the impasse presented by the Cartesian dualism common to cognitive psychology and the postmodernism common to cultural anthropology.
In the section on cognitive psychology, Reddy is trying to establish several points. The first is that the separation of emotions from reasoning simply doesn't hold up in the research. The second point is that emotions are not just simply experienced. They can be monitored, controlled and possibly changed by individuals. Our ability to do this is in itself regulated and somewhat determined by the culture we live in.
These results are supported by what Reddy derives from recent work on emotions in the field of cultural anthropology. Here the predominant theoretical approach is social constructivist. Reddy again wants to emphasize several points. One is that the research indicates that there is tremendous difference in emotional expression from culture to culture although they all seem to draw from the same large pool of possible human emotional expression. The second point, which was original to this reader, is the point that "the ethnographic data routinely contain traces of collective shaping of emotional effort and collective elaboration of emotional ideals"(p.56). When an individual succeeds in living up to these ideals, they are encouraged and admired. Indeed, such successful emotional control may become a source of power for that individual.
So far, what Reddy is presenting is a picture of the emotions as being culturally constructed and circumscribed but also as an area of individual endeavor. In effect cultures create "emotional regimes" that monitor and encourage certain types of emotional expression. Individuals can master their emotions to fit into these regimes through their own efforts and can even over time act in such ways as to change the regimes. How Reddy feels that can occur he explains in the philosophical section of Part 1.
Reddy wants to avoid a postmodernist approach that is based on the signifier/signified relationship. He feels that this leads us to a dead end where all cultures are equally "valid".
Reddy wants to move from Saussure to Quine. Instead of arbitrary signifiers, Reddy wants to use the concept of "translation". Reddy sees the main advantage of this move as being that translation allows us to deal with two qualities of utterances that the signifier idea does not. "...the poststructuralist concept of the sign, because it entails operating with only one code at a time, is by far inferior to ...translation...An utterance occurs not just in the context of a single background code, but also in the presence of material available in many other codes: not just sensory codes...but also procedural codes (p. 321)
Another benefit of the concept of translation is that it restores to the individual that agency, that ability to critique one code because of its lack of fit with the other codes that make up the individual's experience.
Where Reddy feels that this leaves us is with the idea that 1. we can outline a history of the emotional regimes of a culture. This allows us to move beyond the static explanations of emotions offered by anthropology and psychology. It also allows us to deepen our historical understanding by broadening the context of history. It allows us to see one more facet of what was expected of and done by the people that populate our histories.
The second major result of all this is that Reddy feels that his theory allow us to critique and evaluate emotional regimes for how much freedom they allow the members of that culture.
I mentioned above that Reddy's argument was presented in two parts. The second half of the book is Reddy's attempt to offer a case study by applying his theory to the French Revolution. I am totally incompetent to evaluate this portion of the book and so will leave that to other reviewers. However, I did find his theoretical constructs to have explanatory power given what little I know about that period.
Give this book a try. It deserves a far wider popular audience than only one review on [Amazon.com] would indicate. I would compare in ambition and scholarship to Charles Taylor's Sources Of The Self. If you learned from that book (and how could you not?) you will enjoy Reddy's. And even if you do not feel up to writing a review write me and let me know what you think.

A catalogue/book of a 1986 exhibition organised by the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco with the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

An invaluable resource for anyone interested in the Impressionist period in modern art. The book begins with essays entitled: ' The Impressionists and Edouard Manet'; 'The New Painting:Concerning the Group of Artists Exhibiting at the Durand-Ruel Galleries'; 'The Intransigent Artist or How The Impressionists Got Their Name'; 'The End of Impressionism';

The works are arranged around the catalogues of each of the Impressionist exhibitions in Paris (1974, 1876, 1877, 1879, 1880, 1881, 1882, 1886). Each section includes readable essays on the particular exhibition, and reproductions of and notes on the paintings represented in the San Francisco/ Washington exhibition , as well as reproductions of the catalogs of the original Impressionist exhibitions.

The quality of reproductions is very high, given the limitations of still enabling the book to remain affordable to the generalist reader.

There is a wealth of detail in this comprehensive work. The book would be a valuable addiditon to any secondary school, college or public library collection.

Highly recommended.

This is a pretty good book. The author, William Breuer, does a fine job in creating a story that encompasses both the technical and the human sides of the Allied invasion of the French Riviera just after the Allied Normandy invasion of the western coast of France. Breuer also creates just enough background as to where we are in the campaign's action, and then fills in those scenarios with human figures, both American, German, and French Resistance.

The book has several phases, all of which are well done. The first is the preparation for the invasion by the Allies and all the problems that went along with it, plus the concern by the German Generals that an attack was likely. The second portion deals with the airborne troops landing in the dead of night, and the adventures that went along with such a risky undertaking. This portion is perhaps the most interesting and installs in the reader some of that Walter Middy feeling.

The author then goes on with the landing of the gliders, the beachhead bombings, attacking the beaches by assault troops, and continues on until the campaign is considered a success by the Allied forces.

Although the book is comprehensive, it is not boring reading but rather some very positive reporting. What is exceptional about the book is that the author has written it from the serviceman's level rather than from the general's level. The author therefore presents us with a lot of answers that we, as lowly privates and corporals want to know.: how G.I.'s got hurt jumping out of airplanes; what Axis Sally told the troops on the radio; how the Germans acted; how the French Resistance acted; how two soldiers walked up to a hospital in German territory and banged on the door, and then, discovering their mistake when a German opened the door, bluffed and demanded that the Germans surrender or their invisible Allied force surrounding the building would fire on them. The bluff worked!

Very enjoyable reading. Provides a thorough understanding of the southern France invasion.

Black and white and color pages capture her art while accompanying surveys reflect on her life, times and achievements. William Lieberman's Painters In Paris is distributed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and accompanies an exhibition of the same name of paintings by artists of the School of Paris. Works from the Metropolitan's collections trace painting history in France from 1895-1950. A recommended pick.

Flanner (nom de plume: Genêt), a former New Yorker essayist and who lived in Paris for many years, describes the cultural and social life of Paris in the 40s and 50s. She pens wonderful glimpses into what Parisians were thinking, feeling, and doing -Paris' life, wine, art, and ways of thinking. C'est magnifique.

Flanner (nom de plume: Genêt), a former New Yorker essayist and who lived in Paris for many years, describes the cultural and social life of Paris in the 60s. She pens wonderful glimpses into what Parisians were thinking, feeling, and doing -Paris' life, wine, art, and ways of thinking. C'est magnifique.

Once again, William Miller has put together an excellent volume regarding the history of ocean liners, this time those of the CGT. This latest release contains extraordinary b&w photographs and text thoroughly covering the history of every magor CGT liner and most secondary ships from the Washington to the France (1961). Each article includes the specifications of each ship, construction locations, and major birth dates. Where available the current status of each ship is also included.

This book makes excellent reading material, and is perfect for referencing. The photographs included, unlike those in many "typical" compilations, are rather rare- I don't believe I saw any of them until I read this work. In future, I hope Mr. Miller will continue writing these types of books, for their value to the ocean liner wnthusiast far exceeds that of the paper on which they are printed. What's next? Only he knows. (But I would like to see "Picture History of Norddeutscher Lloyd" or "Picture History of HAPAG" soon)