Customer Reviews (1)

The chapter "Don't Move A Muscle" said it "all" for me!!!
In 2002, a couple of weeks before Dad died at eighty years of age (he was in the throes of Parkinson's disease), he was in the living room, sitting immobile and wasinsistent we be quiet. as he believed a Mr. Brady was taking his picture for posterity. Mr. Brady was angry, he didn't want my father to move andBrady wanted us to be quiet.Brady, reportedly,was furious with the noise level,whenI was trying to find out from the only other person in the house -- my mother -- if there was a BRADY photography studio on Staten Island (New York) where my parents originally were born and lived for a majority of their lives (nor, nowhere else we resided, for that matter.)After 2 1/2 hours, I had quite enough, as I was angry because I really thought the medications were doing this to my father. I kept searching for a Brady studios in the telephone books, as well as the Internet. Two days after Dad died, all of a sudden I realized: Brady... Mathew Brady. "But attempting to hold a pose for so long a time could result in a blank stare. To avoid that, the sitter might be instructed to gaze at some distant object, instead of looking directly into the camera lens. Photographic Art Journal, in 1851, advised subjects to think serious or pleasing thoughts, depending on which ever expression they desired..."
"...the sitter's head and the rod behind the sitter's body, they could not be seen in the photograph... When all was in readiness and the camera focused, the plate was inserted in the back of the camera. 'Don't move a muscle!' the sitter was told. 'Don't even breathe!'
The operator then removed the cap from the camera's lens. The subject strained to remain as still as a statue. No one even spoke. After the required exposure time, the lens cap was replaced and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
The plate was removed from the camera, then developed and mounted. At some studios the process was completed in fifteen minutes to half an hour..." [Page 18].
(Do take a look pages 16-20 which is like what occured in our living room.)
So this book about Mathew Brady was helpful far beyond its original intention.A very interesting book, about a very intriguing photographer! ... Read more

Book Description
More than 350 photographs by Mathew Brady and his corps of cameramen, many of them never seen before, make this the most comprehensive collection of Civil War images ever published.

Mathew Brady is arguably the most widely hailed documentarian of America's bloodiest conflict: the Civil War. He and his cameramen created an indelible record of bravery, suffering, and sacrifice. Exhibitions of Brady's photographs helped to introduce Americans to the brutal realities of war, and he was a pioneer in the field of photojournalism by providing his battlefield scenes and portrait photographs to Harper's and other weekly publications of the time for use as woodcuts.

Arranged by battle site and event, each of which is introduced by a brief explanatory essay, the volume offers carefully researched archival information about each image and its photographer. Photographs by Alexander Gardner, Timothy O'Sullivan, and James Gibson are among those included in this thoroughly documented collection.

Caption material includes Library of Congress digital order numbers; order numbers are also given for images from the National Archives. This information helps to make the volume a valuable resource for anyone interested in Civil War history or nineteenth-century photography. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A Nice Pictorial History of the War.
Mathew Brady was called Lincoln's Camera Man, but this photo album is filled with photos from a battery of photographers.It is a nice history in pictures of that time, whoever took them.

These pictures show the devastation of the War.For some reason, though, more of them show dead Confederates.It depicts the war clearly showing some of the multitude killed at Antietam, Gettysburg, the ruins at Harper's Ferry (all places I took my sons to explore a while back).Lincoln is shown at Antietam after the 'bloodiest battle of the Civil War' in October, 1862.Gettysburg, where too many from the South died, occurred in July, 1863.

The pontoon bridges were unusual and clever.The horse and carriages and wagon trains showed how drastically things have changed.Seeing a real ironclad was interesting.

This is a short course in the Civil War for those who want to know what happened; they can see the aspects from a Northerner point of view, as they ravished the South and left parts of it looking like bombed out London or Germany.

A 'Must Have' book for every Civil War library
What an valuable tome, Surley one of the most impressive collections of Civil War images ever collected. The introductions to the twenty-one sections are very helpful for appreciating the 400+ haunting Brady photos. I especially enjoyed the Federal Navy section, with photos I had never seen before, although I've read and edited several publications about the Civil War. Included also is a very practical guide to acquiring copies of the photos. In has been ten years since the prolific George Sullivanpresented his biography of Mathew Brady. It was worth the wait as we have here an award-winning work that should be in teh history section of every private and public library. Not one of the 450 pages is disappointing. ... Read more

Book Description
Both India and China have experienced economic changes that have generated new challenges for local institutions. This volume closely studies the resultant grass-roots political experiences in these countries from an interdisciplinary perspective. It examines the process of democratization and highlights the growing demands for participation and the complex power structures interjecting them.

The contributors to this volume discuss issues relating to institutional structures and the dynamics of local governance in a changing socio-economic environment. In addition to the political economy of rural areas, they also focus on the role of gender, ethnicity, and religion in local political processes.

Key Features

• Outlines how institutional innovation has evolved in both countries
• Highlights the impact of the 73rd Amendment to the Constitution (in India) and the Organic Law (in China) in facilitating political participation
• Investigates how far the new democratic processes have reduced ethnic subordination, caste hierarchy, and gender injustice at the village level

Book Description

Set against the backdrop of Europe's slide into Fascism, this twentieth-century erotic classic takes the reader on a dark journey through the psyche of the pre-war French intelligentsia, torn between identification with the victims of history and the glamour of its victors. One of Bataille's overtly political works, it explores the ambiguity of sex as a subversive force, bringing violence, power and death together in a terrifying unity.

"Georges Bataille is one of the most important writers of the century"-Michel Foucault

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Also available:

My Mother Madame Edwarda and the Dead Man,

TP $14.95, 0-7145-3004-2 CUSA

Literature and Evil

TP $14.95, 0-7145-0346-0 CUSA

L'Abbe C

TP $14.95, 0-7145-2448-X CUSA

Customer Reviews (10)

More languid than arousing
Not nearly as memorable as the surrealist pornography of "The Story of an Eye," nor as thought-provoking as his study of the tangling of the great death and the "little death" of orgasm in his sex-and-mortality, violence-and-the sacred exploration "Erotism," this slim novel, as the author's uncomfortable tone betrays in its afterword, appears half-finished and abandoned rather than meant as it is for publication.

Lazare's fanatical devotion to the Left and especially Dirty's penchant for decadent and unsanitary lifestyle choices remain the most powerfully characterized moments, but too much of the novel remains as jittery and haphazard-- albeit Bataille argues in the afterword he meant it to be read as such-- as comparatively mundane next to the strong opening vignette of Troppmann and Dirty in one of literature's most effectively rendered dives, even by Parisian standards.

As one who has read plenty of Céline, a bit of Sade, and some of Sartre's fiction, this novel held some interest. Yet, it seems too slack, too dragged down by ennui. Far less erotic than a reader of "The Story of An Eye" might expect, this instead recalls Bataille's protege, Pierre Klossowski (his novels have been reviewed by me on Amazon; he's the brother of the painter Balthus) and his philosophical protagonists who also are prone more to shuffling about rather than coupling energetically. The extravagant claims left by readers here appear unfounded, given the turgid pace of its pages and the uneven tone of the narrative.

A review from the author of YEARS OF RAGE
According to Georges Bataille's autobiographical note, LE BLEU DU CIEL ("The Blue of the Sky") was composed in the twilight before the occupation of Vichy France.

The descending night darkens these pages.

Dissolute journalist Henri Troppmann ("Too-Much-Man") and his lover, Dirty give way to every impulse, to every surfacing urge, no matter how vulgar.Careening from one sex-and-death spasm to the next, they deliver themselves over to infinite possibilities of debauchery.A fly drowning in a puddle of whitish fluid (or is it the thought of his mother, a woman he must not desire?) prompts Troppmann to plunge a fork into a woman's supple white thigh.The threat of Nazi terror incites a coupling in a boneyard.

Their only desire is to besmirch whatever is elevated, to vulgarize the holy, to pollute it, to corrupt it, to bring it down into the mud.

By muddying whatever is "sacred," they maintain the force of "the sacred."

As a historical document, BLEU DU CIEL is eminently interesting. It offers unforgettably vivid portraits of Colette Peignot (as Dirty) and the "red nun" Simone Weil (as Lazare).

It is also the story of a man who is fascinated with fascism and the phallus, of someone who loves war, although not for teleological reasons.It is the story of a man who celebrates war on its own terms, who nihilistically affirms its limitless power of destruction.

As the night materializes, the blue of the sky disappears.

Joseph Suglia, the author of YEARS OF RAGE

a severely underrated masterpiece
I don't understand why this book is considered to be one of Bataille's [illegitimate] children. It's beautifully written. The man was capable of working miracles with words through his style and arrangement of them. Blue of Noon is definitely not an exception.

Bataille's style is always one of brutal elegance. He's like a lover who slaps you in the face, only to pull you into a gentle embrace a moment later.

The main character, Troppman, is the star here - he is a deviant trying is best not to be. Ahhhh, the internal struggles - do you stay married and live your life as a respectable, productive member of society. Or do you run off with [prostitutes] and derelicts to indulge the savage needs you've so long supressed.

Not to be outdone, his brightest co-star, is a woman named Dirty. She is a beautiful creation. She is a train wreck of a woman. She and Troppman braid themselves together in clearly conspicuous codependence of the worst sort, bawdy drunkeness paving the pathways to irrevocable damnation.

I also enjoyed Lazare; a woman Troppman finds himself thoroughly disgusted with, she has no redeeming features. Yet, he cannot stay away.

If you are a fan of the madman Bataille, don't miss out on this one. I think this is truly some of his best work.

a severely underrated masterpiece
I don't understand why this book is considered to be one of Bataille's bastard children. It's beautifully written. The man was capable of working miracles with words through his style and arrangement of them. Blue of Noon is definitely not an exception.

Bataille's style is always one of brutal elegance. He's like a lover who slaps you in the face, only to pull you into a gentle embrace a moment later.

The main character, Troppman, is the star here - he is a deviant trying is best not to be. Ahhhh, the internal struggles - do you stay married and live your life as a respectable, productive member of society. Or do you run off with whores and derelicts to indulge the savage needs you've so long supressed.

Not to be outdone, his brightest co-star, is a woman named Dirty. She is a beautiful creation. She is a train wreck of a woman. She and Troppman braid themselves together in clearly conspicuous codependence of the worst sort, bawdy drunkeness paving the pathways to irrevocable damnation.

I also enjoyed Lazare; a woman Troppman finds himself thoroughly disgusted with, she has no redeeming features. Yet, he cannot stay away.

If you are a fan of the madman Bataille, don't miss out on this one. I think this is truly some of his best work.

De Sade's nephew gets all sociopolitical.
"Blue of Noon" is the story of Henri, an amoral man living in Europe during the 1930s. He is supposedly married, but spends his time with similarly amoral women, lacking clothing, inhibition, shame, and even proper hygeine at times. He zips between London, Paris, Barcelona, and Frankfurt, and frankly, engages in nothing but immoral self-satisfying activities in every spot.

At various times, he agonizes over his relationships with his wife, his sexual partners, and his deceased mother. He becomes embroiled in a Communist revolutionary plot in Barcelona, with one of his sexual partners, a Jewish woman, involved in its planning and execution. He reveals his necrophilic obsession to two of his partners, further revealing the exact, even more sickening, subject of his obsession to one of them. He has sex, he gets sick, his women have sex, they get sick, everybody has sex, everybody gets sick. For the punchline, near the end of the novel, Bataille throws Nazis into the picture, showing us that all the depravity of fascism is comparable to the depravity he has shown us all along. Though published in 1957, the book was originally written in 1936.

This reviewer isn't buying it. Not a word of it. Not the story, not even the "1936" part. For one thing, the writing style is actually more mature than that of "L'Abbe C", published in 1950. Bataille is most probably trying to show off that he detected the evil inherent in the Nazis "way back when". I don't give him that much credit.

For another thing, I think he uses Nazis as an easy way to score "scary" points. One might intellectualize his choice by saying Bataille is trying to tell us that no matter how disgusting humans may act, at least we're not as bad as Nazis. Imagine a murderer begging leniency because he's not a Nazi. He's still a murderer. It seems Bataille is using Nazis to justify the pornography he just wrote, as if the world is such a horrible place that pornography is just another little bit of it, and tries to throw a philosophical wrench into the works, as if saying life is meaningless in the face of all the horrible things fascism is doing to us in Europe, but I suspect it was all done just for the hell of it. I frankly don't see any rhyme or reason to the thematic choices he makes.

I have nothing against the depravity or explicit nature of the book. "Been there, done that", right? It's not even all that explicit, there's probably less sex in this book than the average mainstream novel today, and he's certainly not advocating committing even the slightest harm to anyone. There are a few disturbing or distasteful ideas here and there, but one never gets the sense Bataille really means what he's writing. One gets the sense he's simply trying to come up with every juxtaposition of immoral behavior and social taboo he can, just to tweak the reader's moral compass a bit, trying to get a cheap rise out of his audience. Maybe this was an interesting exercise in 1957 (or "1936"), but given the state of depravity which existed in Germany during the 1920s, and the state of sexual liberation which swept Europe from the late 19th century through the early 20th century, I strongly doubt it.

Perhaps the target reader for this book will be the person interested in twisted versions of 19th-century literature (Bataille wrote like someone living 50 or 100 years before his time), or the works of De Sade (albeit in highly shortened format, this book being only 126 pages). ... Read more

Book Description
Written in language that students understand, the authors present problems in this workbook that help students grasp a conceptual understanding of physics. They start first with short, manageable questions followed by longer ones. Mathematical problem solving is emphasized but not the focus of the problems. Rather than repeat what physics textbooks present, this workbook uses problems to teach students the fundamentals of physics. Each problem builds on the preceding successfully completed one so the students are motivated by their success.The authors provide detailed solutions in the workbook for some problems for students to learn how to approach, and ultimately to solve, problems. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Makes physics easy to learn!
This book was required for our introductory physics course at The Ohio State University.This book made physics much easier to understand, as I did not only the required problems but the extra problems as well. I found that the questions on the exams were almost word for word exactly like the problems in this book, which are explained step-by-step.By using this book, I earned an A in physics and gained a greater understanding of the course work.Use this book to bring physics to a fun level and make physics easy! ... Read more

Book Description

This second edition of the Encyclopedia of Drugs, Alcohol, and Addictive Behavior reflects changes in the attitudes about, use, and knowledge of drugs and alcohol since the first edition published in 1995. These changes include the decrease of crack cocaine use and resurgence of heroin use; changes in laws dealing with drug use (on both the state and national levels), and new discoveries leading to a better understanding of how drugs work and what makes them addictive. More than 700 articles, written for both the student and layperson, cover the social, medical and political issues related to drugs and alcohol, as well exploring and explaining types of addiction.