Subjects:  1. Capillarity   2. Chemistry - Physical & Theoretical   3. Physics   4. Science   5. Science/Mathematics   

Subjects:  1. Architecture   2. Individual Architect   3. Public, Commercial, or Industrial Buildings   

Customer Reviews (5)

This book changed my life forever!!
I cannot recommend this book highly enough! The author lived long ago and yet his Christ-centered words ring out beautifully for us modern mortals. I was so moved by his humble approach to God and his deep love and surrender to Christ. A profoundly spiritual and moving experience awaits the reader of this book!

The Paraclete At Work
This book fairly lept at me from the shelf. I wasn't particularly looking for it, but I found it nonetheless. For a former Ayn Rand afficianado & neo-Objectivist, the very title ought to have been anathema. However, it was a greater sense of peace that I was after, and to some extent, this book is helpful at understanding one's true relation to God, particularly in terms of recognizing and submitting to His will.

I had previously attempted Kempis' "The Imitation Of Christ", and found that it was difficult to disassociate from the intended audience of that book (cloistered religious). I'll try to review it in the near future. In any case, my experience with Thomas a Kempis made me a little gun-shy with regard to spiritual primers intended for religious communities. One of the challenges of "Self-abandonment" is the extent of its direct communication between the author (as spiritual director) and the nuns with whom he communicates. Nevertheless, the more generalized introductory sections overcome this difficulty.

I happened to be in the midst of "Self-abandonment" at the time of my grandmother's death. I must say that in retrospect I could not have found a better companion for those days. de Caussade does an excellent job at communicating the spiritual benefits of acceptance, duty, and forgiveness. It ought to be the goal of every Christian to make each day, and each moment of each day a paean to the Lord - seeing His will in all things - even small things and most particularly in painful things is a crucial step toward living a truly Christian life.

Finally, I don't know whether to call this book "life changing," as I believe that one must already be at a certain level of acceptance prior to realizing benefits from the approach that de Caussade recommends. Nonetheless, it is a useful and helpful aid to the continuing trauma of living in the world but not of the world.

Review from the Publisher
This is an amazing 18th century classic divided into 2 parts and giving the method espoused by de Caussade for attaining great holiness. Written for all no matter how advanced spiritually. The author believes that God hides behind the simplest of daily activities and can be found through total surrender to whatever His will is for the individual. Therefore, self-abandonment is the key to spiritual development An outstanding spiritual tool, revealing new insights with each reading. A must for any serious Catholic. 230pp. PB. Imprimatur. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Mysticism   2. Religion - Prayer & Spirituality   

Customer Reviews (1)

Great, but expected something better
Definitely, a great book. Besides the theory, it incorporates MATLAB files for demosntrating the concepts. The authors are definitely masters on the topics. The DAFX conferences' papers, which could be donwloaded from their web sites help to dive deep into the subject. Unfortunately it doesn't give enough coverage to some topics, rather gives a lot of resources (papers, books) where to look for more concise information. Without additional information and knowledge you could not implement any of those awesome effects. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Acoustics & Sound   2. Digital Audio Technology   3. Electronics - General   4. Engineering - Electrical & Electronic   5. Science/Mathematics   6. Technology   7. Technology & Industrial Arts   8. Audio processing: music & sound effects   9. Technology / Electronics / General   

Customer Reviews (1)

Worth the Effort
Ursula King works hard to make the often difficult writing of Pierre Teilhard understandable and applicable to 2000 thinking. She did an especially effective job on this book, and even though it is often slow going, it certainly is worth the effort it takes to understand spirituality, evolution, nature, and essential Oneness from this great French teacher, thinker, scientist, and dispenser of wisdom. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Catholic Church   2. Christian Life   3. Christianity - Catholicism   4. Christianity - Christian Life - General   5. Christianity - Theology - Catholic   6. Religion   7. Religion - Roman Catholic   8. Roman Catholic Church   9. Spiritual life   

Customer Reviews (1)

the legacy of Matisse
Niki de Saint Phalle was a French artist who was once a model, provocateur, and a scion of the feminine principle in the great Matissean way. Her first paintings were man-hating objects d'art, based, no doubt, on Sanit Phalle's rejection of patriarchy, and possibly her troubled situation surrounding her first husband, the affluent novelist Harry Mathews.

Saint Phalle also became known for creating paintings to be shot at with a rifle: she would place paint cans on a canvas, and she would, or maybe another artist like Rauschenberg or Tinguely would, shoot a gun at these paintings. These violent acts would be notorious, creating a drug-like sensation, which would become an asterisk in the annuals of performance art and happenings in the 1960s.

Saint Phalle went back to the style of her earlier art, which explored this lost world of pleasure, very much like Henri Matisse, when she created these sculptures of large, natural women, which she called "Nanas." The largest one "The Hon (1965)," was built by a group of artists, and filled a museum in Stockholm, where spectators could enter through the body, through the vagina. I guess that you had to pay the museum staff (the pimp) for this privilege?

Saint Phalle then collaborated with her second husband, Jean Tinguely, on several projects in the 1970s: this is when the esthetic legacies and ramifications of the two great ones, Duchamp and Matisse, came together in their offspring, Tinguely and Saint Phalle. One can see theri work in Paris, a homage to Stranvinsky in Centre Pompidou (1982): Tinguely's hard machinery which became a parody of rationalism, and Saint Phalle's soft bodies which were discursions in Mediterranean pleasure, yet evocative of Bataille's problematic connection to the excremental world. Saint Phalle spent several years working on her Gaudi-like sculptural garden in Italy, The Taror Gardens, in Garavivvhio (Tuscany). Later in the 1980s, she resurfaced with her book about AIDS.

Many people now find her work dated and possibly hippy dippy. In fact she was one of the original feminist artists, with any self-consciousness or political agenda. Her work, due to its scope and relation to European history and art, has little to do with American artists of the same time, so many people have ignored it. Not many have seen it. Her collage work does have a tangential relationship to Pop Art. There is a movie about her life called "Who Is The Monster: You Or Me?" She died finally in summer 2003. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. 1930-   2. Art   3. Art & Art Instruction   4. Catalogs   5. Individual Artist   6. Saint-Phalle, Niki de,   

Customer Reviews (3)

Artists Books and Journals
When looking at the history, or attempting to discover the history of artists books and journals certainly one would want to include this well appointed book in one's library. It is an enriching experience to savour little bits of correspondence, renderings and illustrated journals of every man, but to be able to also explore the correspond and journals of the well known makes for a bonus. I thoroughly enjoyed receiving this book as a gift and recommend it as a gift to journalers, sketchers and all those visual.

Well Worth the Wait!
I loved this book-- I have had it on my wish list for a long, long time and my wonderful husband gave it (and three other books) to me for my birthday. It was so hard to not ignore everyone and just read it! There are letters from van Gogh, Gaugin, Collete-- all these famous people who corresponded with oftentimes other famous people. It really gives us a deeper understanding of who these people were by seeing what they wrote and how they interpretted their lives.

It is helping my daughter's French-- many letters are in French (with translations!) as well as giving us perspective on their lives and the times the writers were in. I have never sent a blank note to anyone and now thata I see how these letters are cherished years later, I resolve to keep up with my own work!

Artists and Writers Correspond and Sketch
The artists' musings in these provocative letters give us a fascinating insight into their fears and hopes, accompanied by charming and apparently impromptu sketches in watercolor and pen-and-ink drawings. Abrams as always has produced a first-class book. If there is any criticism to be made it is that some of the longer letters are completed in the appendix,making for some clumsy back-and-forth thumbing. Otherwise the editors have come up with some wonderful examples of the genre with illustrations ranging from elegant to fragile.This is a substantial volume that offers many absorbing hours of looking and reading. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Art & Art Instruction   2. Biography/Autobiography   3. European   4. European - French   5. Facsimiles   6. French Literature   7. French letters   8. Illustrations   9. Letters   10. Letters And Correspondence   11. Literary Criticism   12. Manuscripts   13. Manuscripts, French   

Subjects:  1. 1732-1799   2. 1775-1783   3. 18th century   4. Arms transfers   5. Beaumarchais, Pierre Augustin   6. Biography   7. Biography / Autobiography   8. Foreign relations   9. France   10. General   11. History   12. History: American   13. Spies   14. United States   15. Beaumarchais, Pierre Augustin Caron de   

Customer Reviews (1)

Herzog & De Meuron: Natural History
Another object book with content that matches the originality of the design. Herzog & De Meuron, the Basel-based architects, are best known for their art museums, but also for creating buildings that are works of art--even when the program is as mundane as a railroad signal box. This companion to the recent CCA exhibition is an anthology of interviews, stimulating essays by artists and clients, and pictures of objects that have inspired them, in addition to an illustrated catalogue of their 200 buildings and projects. (Michael Webb is the book reviewer for LA Architect magazine.) ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Architecture   2. Collections, Catalogs, Exhibitions   3. General   4. Individual Architect   

Subjects:  1. Classics   2. Comedy   3. Fiction - General   4. Foreign Language Study   5. French   6. Language   7. Untranslated Fiction - French   8. Fiction / Classics   

Customer Reviews (1)

an autobiographical work by the Jesuit scientist...
...and evolutionary philosopher. Worth having, if only for more of the author's wonderfully intuitive insights and a rough chronology of the development of his thought. A man of spirit as well as the earth, I think he would have liked Marie-Louise von Franz's description of alchemy, a discipline akin to the Father's own pursuits: "divine power in matter." ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Christianity - General   2. Christianity - History - General   3. Christianity - Theology - General   4. Religion   5. Religion - Classic Works   

Customer Reviews (2)

review of De Gennes, Superconductivity of metals and alloys
Possibly the best superconductivity book I have ever read. He covers GL equations excellently - he builds them up from Landau theory of phase transitions, by constructing them using the Helmholtz free energy. As far as the microscopic theory goes, BCS is brought from the very beginnings, in a methodical, logical mannar. The book is, however, a little mathematical for most people's tastes. A fair knowledge of quantum mechanics is needed before this book should be read (for example: Dirac notation, matix algebra to mention a few).

I have never read your books before. but I heard.
I am interested in superconductivity and diffusion of superconductivity. I am studying superconductuvitiy and elektrodiffusion. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Engineering - General   2. Magnetic properties   3. Science/Mathematics   4. Superconductivity   5. Superconductors   6. Superconductors & Superconductivity   7. Technology & Industrial Arts   

Subjects:  1. History & Surveys - Modern   2. Metaphysics   3. Philosophy   4. Religion   5. Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre   

Customer Reviews (4)

A little out of date but still worthwhile
Definitely not new-age drivel. I found the essays authoratative, imaginative, and beautifully written. However this book was of limited usefulness for me and ( for different reasons )it may likewise fail to engage those who are not familiar with certain dogmas and apologetic arguments. Teilhard de Chardin wrote most of this in the 1920s before the second Vatican council accepted evolutionary theory. Since then, his enemy has changed from modernism to post-modernism. His essays will seem unnecessarily radical, mystical and, frankly, too preoccupied with Catholicism for skeptics and evangelicals who may be drawn to the book looking for perspectives on the current evolution/creation crisis.

Students of the history of religious thought may give this book a higher rating than mine, and justifiably so. I blush to admit that I don't know the significance of the author in that history.

It's not a sin to make Christianity possible to believe
Teilhard de Chardin probably has done more to make Christianity,and God in general, believable to the modern person than perhaps anyone else. His most endearing quality is his ability to, and this is a necessity if believe in a personal God is to survive in light of the modern world, combine science and God in a unified metaphysical system. No longer are religion and science two mutually exclusive realms of truth: for the theist to have a coherent system, he MUST seek a unity of the two spheres. This, though, involves risks. It involves facing up to conflicts between the two and compels an honest seeker of the truth to entertain abandoning his previously beliefs. For such a person (and I consider myself to be one), Teilhard de Chardin's ideas are invaluable.

I actually had a crisis of faith while reading "Christianity and Evolution." The cause of this unsettling event is not a demonic, evil, blasphemous spirit contained in Teilhard's exhortations but rather the fact that he is quite honest and unforgiving about the serious difficulties raised by traditinal theism. In a way, he is me what Hume was to Immanuel Kant being that he "awoke me from my dogmatic slumbers."

The content of "Christianity and Evolution" is too vast to cover in a review, so instead I will highlight 2 of the more radical or interesting ideas that proceed from it.

The Universal Christ- Christ can only truly be Christ if he redeems all of existence. If he only came to save a particular species of animals on a planet orbiting a normal star, in the outskirts of a normal galaxy, in an insignificant cluster of galaxies, in one of the countless superclusters of galaxies then "he is abjectly extinguished, eclipsed by the size of the universe." Traditional Christian theology states that the reason why Christ redeems the world is that it suffers from sin, Original Sin being foremost (see St. Paul's argument about the Two Adams). However, a literal Fall makes absolutely no sense in light of modern science (specifically the evolutionary history of the earth). But regardless of the nature of the Fall, the spirit of the Bible is clear: all of the universe has been corrupted and the whole of existence must be redeemed. From this follows the demand that Original Sin be universalized: not as a transgression made by a man in a garden in the Persian Gulf region 6000 years ago, but as part of the intrinsic structure of the universe.

The Problem of Evil- Critics of Teilhard, for example Jurgen Moltmann, argue that Teilhard ignores the "losers of evolution," an accusation that amounts to charging Teilhard with neglecting the problem of evil. However, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, from Teilhardian metaphysics the solution to the problem of evil, the only solution I have ever encountered, surfaces. Classical theism is absolutely destroyed when faced with the problem of evil (see William Rowe's argument for atheism). Teilhard provides a solution, though. It would take many pages (26 w/ small print to be exact, in my paper on the topic) to fully argue the Teilhardian position, but his main points can be summed up. 1)Certain impossibilities about creation follow from an honest understanding of the nature of God: agape, completely self-giving, uncoercive... 2)The appearance of evil is not something that God could have prevented nor just "decided to get rid of" but follows from the nature of the creative act itself 3) This is a manifestation of the nature of God 4) Furthermore, although I would have to go into specifics, this insight as well as the universality of Christ (if God is agape, agape is uncoercive, Christ treats the human being as uncoercive, and Christ is the universal Redeemer, then the same freedom manifested as contingency in evolution must be given to the universe as a whole) absolves God from being "negligent" in eliminating evil since God cannot be negligent of eliminating something that he does not have the power to eliminate (because of his nature, not because of a lack of omnipotence). 5) The theodicy theory here is part of his metaphysics which, when thoroughly argued, not only makes evil compatible with God, but makes evil (especially as it is in type and magnitude now, both natural and moral) NECESSARY in a world like this one created by God. Teilhard's apologetic defense of God turns into a lethal argument in favor of his existence by the very thing that the atheist uses as grounds to discredit theism!

Needless to say, you could read Teilhard de Chardin for a decade and still not grasp his genius in its fullness. He covers other areas as well including the topic of Christianity v. Pantheism (interesting solution) and the Trinity (actually puts forth a strong RATIONAL argument for the triune nature of God). This is a must read!

Utter Nonsense
Teilhard's book looks at the theory of evolution and tries to integrate it into Christian theology. He tries to show that evolution actually makes Christianity more logical and relevant than ever. Instead, he comes up with over two hundred pages of nonsense. Chardin rejects many Christian doctrines while claiming to fulfill the faith. Miracles are said to be impossible, as is original sin. Christ, says Chardin, should be seen not as our redeemer but our evolver. At one point he says that Jesus is not merely the answer to our sins but in fact the one who holds the weight of the world in evolution as well! He spends much of the book attacking the concept of the fall of man, which he says could not have involved an Adam and and Eve. Sin, he writes, slipped into humanity only gradually. But he never quite explains how this could happen (perhaps osmosis?). In the midst of all this, he claims that all true Christians must be Catholic. Yet his ideas most certainly contradict Catholic doctrine as surely as they do Protestant. Chardin's book is really no more than a new age manual at best. It is utter nonsense. Even most new age writing is more interesting and more logically presented. For those of you taken in by it, shame on you! ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Christianity - General   2. Christianity - Theology - General   3. Religion   4. Religion & Science   5. Theology   

Subjects:  1. 1740-1814   2. Criticism and interpretation   3. Erotic literature, French   4. History & Surveys - Modern   5. History and criticism   6. Philosophy   7. Philosophy in literature   8. Sade,   9. marquis de,   

Subjects:  1. Body, Mind & Spirit   2. Child Care   3. Devotional   4. General   5. Meditation   6. Meditations   7. New Age   8. Philosophy   

Customer Reviews (1)

A Must for Niki Fans
This is a wonderfully detailed portrayal of Niki de Saint Phalle's Art work that shows she created more than just Nanas. From early paintings in the 50's to multy-media assemblages, to her revolutionary tirs (shooting paintings), and finally the colorful and, sometimes moving, reliefs from the 80's and 90's. In English and French. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Art   2. Art & Art Instruction   3. Collections, Catalogs, Exhibitions - General   4. Individual Artist   5. Sculpture   

Subjects:  1. Children's 4-8   2. Children: Grades 2-3   3. Forest animals   4. Juvenile Nonfiction   5. Juvenile literature   6. Nature - General   7. Nature - Trees & Forests   

Customer Reviews (1)

Two plays that deserve to be better known
These two plays have been made very famous by the two operas by Rossini and Mozart. However the plays seem to be relatively unknown. Of the two plays "The Marriage of Figaro" is the better of the two. I would also like add a criticism of the movie Amadeus. In the movie Salieri comments on the ending of the opera based on the play in a way that seems to imply that Mozart deserves all the credit. In fact the opera is very faithful to the play. Mozart should get all the credit for the music of the Marriage of Figaro, but Beaumarchais deserves credit for the plot.

But to get back to my point, these are two great plays that deserve to be better known. Figaro (the play) was controversial in its day as a satire about the rights of aristocrats but today the satire does not seem very harsh. Figaro the roguish main character who believes he is just as good as his master is one of the great literary characters. That is not just my opinion, it was also the opinion of the novelist Balzac.

I would especially recommend this Penguin edition for the introduction which has a short biography of the adventurous life of Beaumarchais. It is a miracle he found the time to write these plays, but I am very glad that he did. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Continental European   2. Genres & Styles - Opera   3. Music   4. Plays   5. Drama texts: 16th to 18th centuries