What has Opera done to Women? is the focus of Clement's thougths, short essays on the oppressive emotive cauldron Divas inhabit. The world of Opera scholarship is only (within the last ten years) has seen the vigours of social and political perspectives discussed. Writers like Susan McClary, Linda Hutcheon,Tom Sutchliffe,and Anthony Arblaster have deeply thought works scouring the social dimensions of Opera left unattended since its inception. Clement brings a wealth of intellectual sensibilities as well, a Lacanian, feminist who traverses inside the singers mind while she is singing it seems. And saying, "this is not a nice place to sing." And what does Opera grant it's women always fated for death and domesitication,or prison . Clement's readings traverse the traditional operatic repertoire giving you the opera's narrative as she comments and reflects. The section "Tetralogy of the Ring" incites the chauvinistic world of Wagner,how all gods have power, but the Man-Gods can strip the Woman-Gods of their power when they choose to rebel, as Wotan does to Brunnhilde in Wagner's "Die Walkure" in the "Ring". Songs of Lunatics is what women in opera potray as in Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor" Girls who leap into space, Tosca and Melisande. Or in Bizet's "Carmen" who has no fixed place, her lightness is always in darkness away from lechery and exploitation. You will feel Clement's compassion for Opera's oppressed cadre,and her wrath in speaking of opera's deeply prejudiced phallocentricism. Indeed this has been the most profound book on opera. It makes you rethink all you have ever known, or didn't know on this most cloistered self-preserved realm of music drama. I had wished Clement had ventured into this century for there are profound examples of positive even rebellious roles of women, as in Alexander Goehr's "Behold The Sun" set in Anabaptist Germany of the 1500's, or Luigi Nono's "Like a Burgeoning Light of Love" with a text by Louise Michel ,where three women visit the war fields of this century and comment.

Few books offer such depth and marvelous furrows for the revistation of some gravid ideas. Perhaps the author is too clever. Dumezil's lifetime is thick with learning, teaching and casting solutions to problems of Indo-European language, myth and culture. The handsome book holds two parts, both framed in dialogue. The first part meditates on the interpretation of some of the verses and prophecy of Nostradamus. If one can show that the prophecy itself is accurate by marshalling the linguistic and historical evidence so convincingly that no other interpretation of the words seems valid, prophecy cannot be entirely wrong, even if it cannot be reproduced as scientific practices require, the dialogue seems to suggest. Perhaps there is excitement for some to consider the connection between the prophecy and its signified event, occurring at a remove of centuries. The disputants combat one another over the correct punctation, syntax, and maniacal (nearly Oulipian) effects that Nostradamus (may have) produced. After the text has been fixed, historical comparisons can be made, once unhelpful skepticism has been dispatched. It's all very exciting in my opinion. The foreward suggests that the book is as much about methods and the author's own life as it is about Nostradamus. Knowing little else about the author himself, I would pretend to agree; for there is much that seems too sensitive to contrive and much that seems indifferent to the portentous parts of Nostradamus.

The smart and gentle dialogue may lead one to long for a teacher and friends of similar inclination in order to pursue a secret or double life for the discussion of things that really don't find fruitful manifestation in society at large. The second, smaller part of the book is a meditation on the meaning of Socrates' last words. This book is not a must read, but it is a delight that vicariously pleasured this reader with the abilities of sophisticated reading and delusions of humanist grandeur.

..Set in Lyon after the Germans had invaded the southern 'zone libre' this book purports to be a diary, written during a nine month period of 1943 by one of the most France's most famous resistance 'personalities'. Claude Berri's acclaimed 1995 film 'Lucie Aubrac' was based on the events described. As a number of reviewers have already remarked , many scenes in this account appear to have been directly conjured up from the author's imagination and the Aubracs themselves, subject to media scrutiny as France's resistance history is increasingly put under the microscope have admitted that this book is indeed part novelisation. Translated from the French 'Ils partiront dans l'ivresse' the author revels in her self portrayal as mother, heroine, & machine gun toting guerilla fighter and resistance cell leader. No where does she state that she and her husband were leading lights in a communist resistance grouping and no light is shed at all on what their role might have been in the capture by the Gestapo of De Gaulle's envoy and resistance unifier Jean Moulin in Caluire, a suburb of Lyon during June 1943. One of the main espisodes of the book is Aubrac's attempt to liberate her husband, captured at the same time as Moulin and held by Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie. The facility with which she is able to come and go from Gestapo headquarters in Lyon has led more than one writer to question whether or not the Aubracs were indeed on Barbie's payroll; either that or many elements of Raymond Aubrac's subsequent escape are pure invention. Of course Klaus Barbie muddied the waters somewhat at his trial in the late 80's but the brutal portrayal of him here simply begs the question...how could he possibly have been taken in as Aubrac suggests. Post Liberation, Aubrac's husband oversaw the 'épuration' or cleansing in and around Marseilles and effectively presided over a killing spree as suspected collaborators were ruthlessly hunted out of French society and summarily executed in many cases. Facts that sit uneasily with the rather rose-tinted view of resistance presented here...In France the Aubrac's are still taking to court authors who question the veracity of their accounts...

Lucie Aubrac's first hand account of her "career" as a key member of the French resistance in the city of Lyon can't help but evoke an emotional connection between the author's gripping story and the reader sitting in comfort at home. I mostly second all that the previous reviewer lauded. The story itself is compelling, and the glimpse that it offers of a woman's struggle to balance the cares of wife, mother, "girlfriend," "fiancee," patriot, etc., provides a much needed balance to our understanding of the total effects of a conflict such as WWII. The personalness of the book is perhaps its greatest strength.

The translation is extremely fluid and detracts not at all from the author's tale.

Some criticism to keep in the back of the mind: it could simply be the author's purpose, however, I was struck by the seeming lack of concern of being caught -- until the end of the book (I won't spoil it for you). Lucie's life seems to be minimally impacted by her resistance ties. Like I said, maybe she left out those details on purpose, I don't know. The other thing the "bothered" me was the unconvincing account of how she was able to arrange for the purchase of silencers in Switzerland, travel to Switzerland to pick up the silencers, and then recross the border the same day without arousing suspicion. I doubt she was able to pick up the telephone and call a gun dealer to arrange the transaction -- maybe I missed it. Whatever, just something to consider.

On the whole, I heartily endorse this book; it is exciting without being Bond-ish, and it is personal without being too proximate. Furthermore, it convincingly demonstrates the various motives of resistance, and it illustrates the fact that even a single person can make a difference in a struggle as vast as a world at war.

Lucie Aubrac captivated me. She writes about facts with the warmth of a woman who is dedicated to the Resistance, to her husband, and to her child. When you read this you are plunged into the French Resistance almost as if you had been there!!!

As the two other biographies of Foucault (David Macey's and James Miller's flame thrower of a biography) are no longer in print, this objective and fair biography will suffice.

Eribon concerns his work primarily with Foucault's academic activities (a proverbial who's who of twentieth century French intellectual life) as well as his political engagements. Surprisingly these two aspects bring out a highly contradictory Foucault: on the one hand, we find a determined academic who succeeds to the College de France and becomes an important institutional figure in the French Academy; but on the other hand, there is teh Foucault who was committed to social justice, human rights, and a dedicated iconoclast who mistrusted power, authority, and the institution.

But what is lacking is a penetrating account of Foucault's last years. Eribon fast-forwards from 1977 (the year of Volonte du Savoir) to Foucualt's untimely death in 1984. This comes as a great disservice for in those seven years Foucault's work, in its absolute silence, underwent a significant and startling change. Also, missing from this period is Foucault's re-engagement with Catholicism, not as a practitioner nor a believer, but as an austere intellectual who felt great affinities with the tradition of the Church and Scholarship.

On this note, the recent collection 'Religion and Culture' includes a revealing preface by James Bernauer which reflects on Foucault's final years as he conducted research for the last two volumes of the History of Sexuality in a Catholic library.

This work gives a lucid grasp of Foucault the man but falls short of introducing him fully fleshed out to the reader. However, I strongly believe that the book is a balanced, and richly precise account of the philosophers life. The biography is most beneficial as an account of Foucault's political opinions and activities. Like many of his fellow nomaliens in the 1950s, Foucault was briefly a member of the Communist Party, although his involvement was rather distant - some details of which are explored within the book. Eribon ought to know, he knew Foucault from 1979 to 1984. Foucault was moreover a member of an intellectual scenes of which he was but a part - albeit an important part. Only the scantiest outline of his childhood and adolescence (during wartime Paris) is given, and even most of what we are informed of his later life seems to take a back seat to the almost encyclopedic publication histories of his books and Foucualt's impressions of his contemporary thinkers and colleagues. An example of this explanation is the fact that Sartreans attacked Les Mots et Les Choses as unhistorical and reactionary - all of this information helps to elucidate this enigmatic figure to the reader.

Unfortunately, Eribon's biography has little to say about the logic of Foucault's political development or how it is related to the development of his philosophical ideas. What is pleasantly puzzling in Foucault is the concurrent rejection of Marxism (his work, after all, assert the centrality of thought in forming historical experience) and the sustained endorsement of radicalism. Eribon is clear to point that Foucault makes an interesting contrast with his contemporary Francois Furet, who shared with him the responsibility of disengaging French intellectuals from Marx. One might also lament that no clear picture of his private life or character emerges, as it does with David Macey's (The Lives of Michel Foucault) rendition. Eribon clearly conjectured that Foucault's homosexuality is axial to understanding both the man and his ideas, but perhaps out of fear of the reductive misuse of this issue he shrinks away from it - I am grateful to Eribon for this. Reducing the mans work detracts from the oeuvre and lessens the biographical project. We learn virtually nothing about Foucault's relations with the two important romantic interests of his life, the young composer Jean Barraque, with whom he had a "tempestuous and passionate relationship" (Eribon, 1991: 65) and with the sociologist Daniel Defert, whom he considered for the last 25 years of his life. According to Eribon, the flight of Foucault's sexual experience ranged from guilty to neurotic. Foucault lived the underworld of Parisian bars in the 1950s to the blissful and celebratory eroticism of the Bay Area in the 1980s when he began spending part of the academic year in Berkeley and were he, Eribon asserts contracted AIDS from which he dies in 1984. However, Eribon, it should be noted, writes with non-titillating discretion and non-reduction. Although Foucault's homosexuality may have played a role in forming some of his ideas, we cannot and should not reduce it to that but understanding it is essential. According to Eribon, "Foucault's work is a long exploration of transgression." (Eribon, 1991: 328)

On a more "intellectual note" Eribon is clear to point out that Foucault tried to explain in Les Mots et Les Choses that the question of whether events had or had not occurred could only be raised in relation to the perspective from which the question of their occurrence might arise. As a case in point, Foucault mentions that those caught up in the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution could not have had the thought that what they were going through as precisely that - the Industrial Revolution. Eribon is good at bringing out that according to Foucault, systems of thought have to be understood not only through the explicit "discourse" in which they are given expression, but equally through the structure and lives of the institutions in which they are embodied and through which they are worked out - - the "episteme". This is not, in my opinion, a book of major scholarly guise but rather, one may, with respect rather than insolence, call a genuinely high form of "intellectual journalism" and it will stand the test of time. Despite David Macey's skill at making Foucault accessible in "The Lives of Michel Foucault" and James Miller's excesses regarding Nietzsche in "The Passion of Michel Foucault" (all available on Amazon.com) this translation of Eribon's biography "Michel Foucault" by Betsy Wing is an essential for every Foucault library and my personal favorite.

Miguel Llora

The type of literature that recreates in the symbolic, exploring the unconscious in an extremely poetic manner, this book, opened on any page at random, will undoubtedly widen your understanding of love and take you where you dream to have lived it. Source of inspiration for thorough introspection in the most awe-inspiring landscapes of the soul, the material mingles with the word to carry you where the body alone cannot take you. An exercise of the feminist language. Some might have got bored by reading it in a conventional way. But, using it with that ethereal wisdom that comes from the debris of unbridled passion, it might prove to be your most precious pillow-book.

This slender book provides intense reading; it is almost a play for just two characters, as a tough boy discovers his aging grandfather. Angry and rebellious that his parents have temporarily abandoned him with an unknown old man in a decrepit house out in the boonies, the boy tries to run away. But he gradually finds himself drawn to stay--not because of the crusty oldtimer, but to help care for a sick crane. The only tenderness the old man exhibits is for wildlife, which provides a tentative bond. The kid, who is rarely addressed by his name, is not a sympathetic protagonist (boastful, selfish, arrogant), but he finally grows out of himself enough to feel compassion for another species. In so doing, he becomes more human and accepting of his suddenly-acquired grandfather.

Very short, intense tale about a 10-year-old boy's discovery of his aging grandfather and bird lore. Resentful of being temporarily abandoned by his parents with an crusty old man he never met before, Sammy spends two days finding out about himself as he starts to grow up. After his unsuccessful attempt to run away, he grudgingly helps the old man care for a wounded crane. The boy is not at all likeable, but he learns to take into consideration both creatures and people besides himself, as he comes to respect the winged kingdom which his grandfather loves. In so doing, he comes to appreciate the old man, who finally addresses the boy by his name.

House of Wings is truly a remarkable book. It is about a boy named Sammy and his grandfather who learn how to preserve and conserve the nature. Sammy lives in past day West Virginia and he is 8 years old. His parents, who were in the red for the bank, left him to go to Indiana. He was left with his 'crazy and strange' old grandfather who's only bond is with nature. His grandfather loves birds, but the boy is rebellious and hates them. He wants to run away. I really enjoyed this book and I hope that through reading this, you will too.

Only a French author could have written this novel. Full of soul and intricate feelings, but not really going anywheres.It is a mental exercise more than a story. The French are very good at this. One of the best is still Francoise Sagan. This book doesn't even come close.

This book is a waste of paper. It is extremely hard to follow and it actually puts me to sleep when I read it.

I started reading this book with the expectation that I would learn about women in a culture totally different than mine. Instead, I read the story of a lusty, rich, worldly woman with no sense of morality. Then it gets incredibly dry as the author launches into a historical story from the middle ages. Very boring, and I heartily do NOT recommend this book.

I read the book without knowing what the subject would be. I was happy to find the same style Assia Djebar has acustomed us with. True I didn't see myself in the main character but I could see Algerian women of pre and post-revolution, mostly the city women. I don't think that this book gives a picture of another culture like the previous previewer was hoping to find. Also, the book was translated from French. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in reading about an Algeria that is not darkened by the stereotype of today, fundamentalist, terrorist...