Customer Reviews (1)

Interesting, though somewhat dry
This book is a collection eleven papers delivered at a University of London Institute of Archaeology symposium, in April of 1981. The first three chapters are on three sites: Buseirah (near Petra), Wadi el Hasa (north of Buseirah), and Iron Age burial practices throughout the Jordan area. The second section has papers on Tayma, Edomite and Midianite pottery. The third section, on metallurgy, contains the results of a lab reconstruction of an ancient copper smelting furnace, and a look at iron working and its perception in Biblical Israel. Section 4 is on Social and Political History subjects, with the first one being on the campaign against Moab in 2 Kings 3 (and the identification of the kings involved), the second examines the relationship between the Midianites and Ishmaelites, and the third paper discusses the extent of Midian holdings and the possibility that Gideon was a Midianite.

The font used make the text look like it was typed on a typewriter, with the illustrations being few and primitive. As for the articles, they are quite interesting, but sadly written in an academic style, which makes them less interesting to the casual reader. That said, the articles are quite interesting, and well worth reading. The papers I found most interesting in this book are Professor Khair Yassine’s took at Iron Age burial practices, and Professor John Sawyer’s look at iron in Biblical Israel. I found the latter work quite interesting.

Therefore, I give this book a rather qualified recommendation. ... Read more

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Her vision and politics have set her at the forefront of contemporary poetry and her work has a far-reaching impact on all poets and readers of poetry today. A dedicated and inspired teacher, her innovative and highly successful poetry program, Poetry for the People, has recently emerged as a national phenomenon. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Poetry for the People
This book is an outline for how to recreate the late June Jordan's revolutionary poetry class at UC Berkeley.From how to organize, to how to pick a curriculum and run a workshop, to how to kick off a reading and publish a class chapbook, this volume recreates the process that will allow you to teach poetry to a broad cross-section of the population.And not just at a university, either: the book describes how this same process, with minor amendments, was used in public schools and in an area church.I can imagine this same blueprint being used to teach poetry in a community center, a long-term care home, or a prison with similar good effect.

And even if you're not inclined to teach, there is a great deal of information in this book that will help you learn how to write.Jordan inserts her guidelines for revision, self-critique, self-publicity, and other skills a working poet will need.Whether you want to work with others or alone, this book will open your eyes to the ways poets improve their art.

There is even a healthy selection of poetry that poets and teachers of poetry should take a look at.Categorized according to racial, social, sexual, and other lines, it will allow you to build a library that represents a cross-section of verse as it is written in America today.The list is a little out of date, having been written in 1995, but if you have access to a good library, or even time to look around Amazon.com, you should be able to bring the selection up to date for your own writing.

The book isn't without problems.In the reading selection, the "White Male" section seems to stop with the death of Robert Frost, as though no white men have written poetry, or none worth mentioning, for the last 45 years.Some of the poetry from the class is very confessional, sometimes at the expense of quality, so there are poems which seem less like poetry amd more like airing dirty laundry in public.And the social outlook of the book is very urban-centered, as though if you don't live in a world surrounded by urban sprawl and drenched in media, you can't write or perform poetry.

But on balance, even a rural white male poet with nothing to confess will have a great deal to gain from this book.From how to edit yourself to how to organize with other poets to how to publish and publicize, there is a great deal you'll be able to take away and apply to your own poetry and your own community.A must-have for all poets who aspire to work in a serious and committed manner, and for poetry teachers who want to do more than just copy-edit their students' work.

A Fitting Memorial to a Truly Great Woman
I stumbled on this book when I was looking for new resources for good poems to read for Black History Month.Flipping through it, I found it instantly engaging, so I had no problem buying it on the spot.

It went on the stack of 'next time you're looking for something interesting to read' and had to wait for me to finish a few books of poetry, as well as Ted Kooser's Poetry Home Repair Manual.I felt some sort of irrational loyalty to the new Poet Laureate.But Kooser is good; very good.He made me think through everything that I write -- carefully, critically -- and my spirit was quickly wilting.I needed an antidote; or, more precisely, a complement, a little yin to counterbalance the substantial yang of Kooser's superb book.June Jordan was the very thing.

Reading it is a joy.Thinking through how to teach people to write poetry that speaks to the truth of their world, their experience, and how to bring it to the public -- all the grub with the glory, so to speak -- with June Jordan and her students was pure pleasure.And I couldn't argue with the results -- which are generously sprinkled throughout the book, with an extra dollop at the end.Poetry, the craft and how to sell it.

I have to mention that one thing that initially attracted me to Poetry for the People was the memory that Jordan had recently died (in 2002, I believe).I'm in the habit of reading a book by an author when they die as a sort of memorial, an extended meditation on their contribution and general mutability, if you will.We lost a great one when we lost June Jordan; but she was responsible enough to leave a substantial legacy, so the net loss is negligible.It's ours because she wanted it to be.

A good read
Even if you don't teach poetry writing, you will love this book if you're a writer of politically conscious poetry or if you care about how good poetry gets written. With the popularity of Slam poetry these days, this is a very useful primer. It includes poems from different cultural backgrounds about a range of racial, social, and gender issues. It also provides lists of suggested readings that go beyond the narrow range of poetry books found in mainstream bookstores.

A tribute to the power of poetry and to democratic teaching
Lauren Muller, editor, gently persuades a talented crew from June Jordan's Poetry for the People classes at UC Berkely, to tell the rest of us how they do it--run poetry workshops and readings that literally transformtheir participants and audiences. The book provides college andcommunityteachers with an accessible plan for poetry workshops, includingsyllabii, bibliographies, thoughtful meditations on the teaching andwritingof poetry, and a rich sampling of poems. It's a tribute not only tothe power of the word but also to the solid principle that teaching, likepopular theater, is one of the democratic art forms that can revolutionizethe way we think and how we live in community.

Puts "the people" back into poetry
This book, based on the experience of students and poets involved with June Jordan's popular UCal/Berkeley poetry courses, is a handbook for people who want to put poetry in the mouths and pens of "ThePeople," everybody -- whether in the university or in a communitysetting such as a coffeehouse or church. The "white male" poetryof the "canon" is here put in its rightful place as but one ofthe several American poetry traditions, which also include AfricanAmerican, Caribbean, Native American, Asian American, Chicano/a, gay andlesbian, women's, and Irish American poetry, for which beginningbibliographies are supplied, as is a sample syllabus and an anthology ofstudent poetry. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (7)

An amazing man wrote this book
I had the pleasure of being taught by Mark Jordan my senior year of college at Emory University.I'm not a particularly emotional person when I'm not supposed to be, but one of the lectures he gave in class about this very topic made me teary.I would say that any piece of academic work that you can get your hands on by Dr. Jordan is a must-have.

Intriguing and concise account of theology of "sodomy"
at the start of the second millennium of Christianity.

Looking at the preceding "review" that ignores the subject of the book (what Christian theologians of roughly a millennium ago wrote about "sodomy") and seems to have been written by someone who did not read the book but substituted his own condemnations of homosexuality, I was astounded to read that Romans 1 is clear. The "reviewer" also must not have read that, because the syntax (in the original, which the reviewer probably does not know was not English) is VERY convoluted.

There are no condemnations of "sodomy" (by any name) in the Gospels that allegedly report the words of the Christ, and Mark Jordan's book does not deal with the Hebrew background or the first millennium of Christianity.

(An earlier reviewer must not have seen the blurb FROM Michel Foucault for John Boswell's book, one that is considerably less sound than Jordan's.)

revisionist dissembling
Only a "scholar" could ignore the plain text of Leviticus 18:22, Romans 1:26-32, and similar pre-Christian and early Christian proscriptions of homosexual sex, then divert into the etymology of the term "sodomy" to pretend that the sinfulness of homosexual behavior is some recent fabrication of a "homophobic" cabal in the Church. As early as the Council of Ancyra (314 A.D.) the Church spoke juridically against those "who.. commit [acts of] defilement with animals or males." Certainly that the Church spoke in different terms, even in circumlocutions, to avoid describing acts so foul against Christian morality provides no "cover" for the sin. Whether "sodomy," "defilement," or "liers with mankind," Christians have always taught that homosexual behavior is intrinsically disordered and sinful --- at least until revisionist "scholars" sought to muddy the water with fabrications.

Incisive analysis of late-medieval discourse on sodomy
The writing and reasoning in this history of the medieval formation of Christian condemnation of the "nefarious sin" of "sodomy" are very crisp. My only complaint is that the book is too short (not examining the condemnation of "sodomites" in the first Christian millennium, or in Jewish or Islamic theology).

Jordan shows how one after another Church Father produced incoherent condemnations of sodomy--monastic, clerical, and layman--in part out of concern for suggesting such a sin to those not aware of its possibility, in part not wanting to reveal the extent of its prevalence within the priesthood and monasteries. One striking feature is that this tradition/discourse only began more than a thousand years after Christ, who is not recorded as having condemned sodomy or sodomites.

Deeper, Deeper
No one is at fault.It is simply the nature of the beast that each book has its limitations, each author his or here axe to grind, and so be it, and so what?The point is that books in general and this book inparticular do not go far enough, deep enough.Robert Graves (e.g., THEGREEK MYTHS) is a good place to start one's investigation into the OriginalSodomy, which was heterosexual...always!...indeed, it involved a complexsodomistic Priesthood in honor of the Great Goddess, and had nothingwhatsoever to do with males. ... Read more

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The year 2008 marks the 40th anniversary of Madaba Plains Project archaeological research in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The Madaba Plains Project is one of the longest-lived, continuously running archaeological excavation projects in the Middle East. Spanning four decades, the project, with its beginnings at Tall Hisban in the late sixties, has engaged 1,500 participants, produced scores of publications and spawned a dozen other projects. Its legacy includes being one of the first major Near Eastern archaeology projects to adopt a multi-millennial, regional approach; to incorporate ethnoarchaeology and environmental studies; to construct data around a "food-systems" approach; and to computerize procedures for archaeological data acquisition and analysis, thus helping advance both the theoretical underpinnings and the field methods of archaeology in the southern Levant and beyond. Madaba Plains Project directors, wishing to celebrate this major scientific and historical milestone, have produced this anniversary volume which:- highlights the value of ongoing collaborative research across the region of central Jordan, attempting to explain life and survival from the Bronze ages through the Islamic and early modern periods and features the latest results from ongoing research- enlivens the discussion by hearing from major scholars in the field who, in the process of assessing the contributions of the project to the archaeology of the southern Levant, broaden the discussion in the context of ancient Near Eastern archaeological research- expands the horizons of the project's research by presenting the ever enlarging number and extent of projects conducted by dig directors once on staff with the Madaba Plains Project, thereby taking readers all over Jordan and beyond. ... Read more

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A Book of Natural History, a collection of scientific texts by various authors including Charles Darwin. 193 pages illustrated. ... Read more

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This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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How were we transformed from ape-like creatures without tool-making, language ot culture into people of the latter part of the last ice age who, give or take the further progress of technology, were just like ourselves? Covering five million years, this is the story of human evolution. Incorporating fresh fossil discoveries in Africa, new assessments of old finds, the latest genetic developments and fledgling studies on the evolution of the mind, it is a vivid account of our collective past. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Human EvolutionPrimer
This synopsis of our evolutionary roots is great for someone like myself who has only a casual interest in this subject. It is of course a short volume that quickly gets to it's many points with the lastest (circa 1999) findings and research available, in an easy to read writing style. It has been a long time (decades) since I took a university anthropology course, this book brought me basically up to date.

Paul Jordan in this book clearly illustrates our evolutionary relationships with early primates, and onwards with proto-humans such as Australopithecines, Homo ergaster and erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, Neanderthalers, Cro-Magnon, and others, up to modern Homo sapiens sapiens. I found the new research concerning mitichondrial DNA fascinating. Jordan also discusses the types of artifacts, including tools and weapons, used by early man, and in addition covers man as the social animal and the invention of religion and art, and many other of the activities of early man, including hunting, dwellings, fire use, and agriculture.

This is a book that is firmly based in reality but I realize does conflict with the world-views of most people, as a result these types of books tend to be not read widely, and that is a shame as this volume is very informative. I would have given this book five stars instead of four, but this book is in terrible need of some illustrations, there are none. ... Read more

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In 1900 very few historians were exploring the institution of slavery in the South. But in the next half century, the culture of slavery became a dominating theme in Southern historiography. In the 1970s it was the subject of the first Chancellor's Symposium in Southern History held at the University of Mississippi. Since then, scholarly interest in slavery has proliferated ever more widely. In fact, the editor of this retrospective volume states that since the 1970s "the expansion has resulted in a corpus that has a huge number of components-scores, even hundreds, rather than mere dozens." He states that "no such gathering could possibly summarize all the changes of those twenty-five years."

Hence, for the Chancellor Porter L. Fortune Symposium in Southern History in the year 2000, instead of providing historiographical summary, the participants were invited to formulate thoughts arising from their own special interests and experiences. Each paper was complemented by a learned, penetrating reaction.

"On balance," the editor avers in his introduction, "reflection about the whole can convey a further sense of the condition of this field of scholarship at the very end of the last century, which was surely an improvement over what prevailed at the beginning."

The collection of papers includes the following: "Logic and Experience: Thomas Jefferson's Life in the Law" by Annette Gordon-Reed, with commentary by Peter S. Onuf; "The Peculiar Fate of the Bourgeois Critique of Slavery" by James Oakes, with commentary by Walter Johnson; "Reflections on Law, Culture, and Slavery" by Ariela Gross, with commentary by Laura F. Edwards; "Rape in Black and White: Sexual Violence in the Testimony of Enslaved and Free Americans" by Norrece T. Jones, Jr., with commentary by Jan Lewis; "The Long History of a Low Place: Slavery on the South Carolina Coast, 1670-1870" by Robert Olwell, with commentary by William Dusinberre; "Paul Robeson and Richard Wright on the Arts and Slave Culture" by Sterling Stuckey, with commentary by Roger D. Abrahams.

Winthrop D. Jordan is William F. Winter Professor of History and professor of African American studies at the University of Mississippi. His previous books include White Over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812 and The White Man's Burden: Historical Origins of Racism in the United States, and his work has been published in the Atlantic Monthly, Daedalus, and the Journal of Southern History, among other periodicals. ... Read more

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This is the second volume to appear in English of Mr Heerding's magisterial history of N. V. Philips' Gloeilampenfabrieken, first published in The Netherlands in 1986. It traces the growth and development of the firm from its establishment in 1891 until the retirement of Gerard Philips in 1922. This was a period of dramatic worldwide expansion, and Mr Heerding's vivid account assesses not merely the indigenous factors behind the company's success - notably its production system and marketing expertise - but also the wider technological developments that were shaping the lamp industry generally. Mr Heerding shows how from its earliest days Philips pursued a vigorous export policy bringing it into conflict with entrenched interests in Germany and North America in particular, and was thus able to survive when many of its competitors were floundering. Mr Heerding analyses the long struggle against the German Patentgemeinschaft, and Philips' extensive American involvement, culminating in lengthy negotiations with General Electric: the study provides an illuminating example of how a small company, building on the personal strengths of its founders, can in fact establish itself within a market dominated by monopolies and cartels. As with Volume 1, Mr Heerding provides far more than just the internal history of one company, examining in detail the socio-economic structure of Eindhoven, the Catholic provincial town that was to become the world headquarters of the Philips organisation. He shows how forms of profit-sharing, housing and educational schemes were progressively introduced, as the company, from being a suspiciously watched outsider, became the dominant presence in the town. Sadly, Mr Heerding died shortly after completion of Volume 2 of the Dutch edition: this English impression should make a fitting memorial to one of the foremost Dutch business historians of recent times. ... Read more

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Explains why the American Revolution took place and those instrumental in bringing it about. ... Read more

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The Illustrated History of Leicester's Suburbs shows, through a fine selection of photographs from the Leicester Mercury and Leicestershire Record Office, how the countryside, farms and villages developed into the urban streets, residential areas, shopping districts and industrial estates that are so familiar today. In the course of the last 150 years, the outskirts of the city have been transformed, and they have expanded, in a way that would astonish Leicester residents of just a few generations ago. In this detailed and fully illustrated account of the suburbs, Christine Jordan offers a concise history of each district, but she also features local anecdotes and myths and folklore, and she remembers remarkable, sometimes bizarre episodes and notable individuals who played their part in the story. Her survey will be essential reading and reference for everyone who takes an interest in their neighbourhood and in the complex, surprising history of the city itself. Leicester evolved over the centuries, gradually at first, then grew swiftly during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.In the time of a few generations, small villages on the periphery were absorbed by the city's expansion - by new industry, new housing, civic buildings, roads and amenities. But Christine Jordan shows how these villages retained an identity, and their names have lived on in the urban areas that surround the centre. The origins and development of districts as diverse as Aylestone, Braunstone, Stoneygate, Evington, Spinney Hills and Clarendon Park are recalled in her account, as are the stories of the many other communities that make up the modern city. ... Read more

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This series examines major historical watersheds and their impact on the world, with each book recounting the chain of events and analysing their repercussions, both immediate and long term. It contains important information on key people and events and includes contemporary artwork and relevant photographs to help understanding of the issues. The key features include: up-to-date and relevant for children of today; new editions feature a fresh new design; and, more primary sources add to the readers greater understanding of the era. ... Read more

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Describes the holiday known as Juneteenth Day, which has roots in Texas and which celebrates the end of slavery in the United States.

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Introducing younger students to the Juneteenth holiday
Each book in the Holiday Histories series describes one of America's holidays for very young readers by exploring the history of each one and showing the reasons why it is important.In this particular volume Denise M. Jordan explains how Juneteenth Day is the oldest African-American holiday that celebrates the very last day of slavery in the United States.Although Abraham Lincoln ordered in the Emancipation Proclamation that all slaves were to be freed on January 1, 1863, the slaves in Texas were not told until June 19, 1865.Jordan explains how it was against the law to teach slaves how to read and write, which resulted in them pronouncing some words differently, why is how during the telling and retelling of the last days of slavery June 19 became Juneteenth.

This book provides a summary of slavery in the United States, covering how the argument over slavery eventually started the Civil War.But most of the book focuses on how the rumors of freedom and the presence of Union troops in Texas finally resulted in Union General Gordon Granger reading an order declaring "all slaves are free."The last part of the book looks at how freedom was celebrated both then and now, as the celebrations that started in the churches eventually became big parades in cities like Houston, Dallas, and Fort Worth.

Each page of this book contains a paragraph of simple text and either a historic illustration or contemporary photograph.The back of the book includes a list of important dates related to the topic of Juneteenth, from 1806 when Lincoln was elected president to 1994 when a movement started to make Juneteenth Day a national holiday.There is also a Glossary of key words and a trio of books where very young readers can read more about the holiday.Other books in the series look at not only the "main" holidays like Halloween, Independence Day, and Thanksgiving Day, but the ones that do not always get mentioned like Cinco de Mayo and Columbus Day.These are a nice series of books for introducing the holidays to younger students. ... Read more

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Three authors have combined to produce this local history of the West Midlands suburb of Olton, with sections on early history, Victorian times and pre-war Olton. ... Read more