Product Description
An Anchor Books Original

One day, on the brink of despair and contemplating her own mortality, novelist A. L. Kennedy is offered an assignment she can’t refuse–an opportunity to travel to Spain and cover a sport that represents the ultimate confrontation with death: bullfighting.

The result is this remarkable book, which takes Kennedy and her readers from the living room of her Glasgow flat to the plazas del toros of Spain and inside the mesmerizing, mystifying, brutal, and beautiful world of the bullfight. Here the sport is death: matadors (literally "killers") are men and, increasingly, women who, not unlike the Roman gladiators before them, provide a spectacle to the crowd, a dance in which their own death is as present as that of the bull. Wonderfully relaying the elements of the sport, from the breeding of the bulls and the training of the matadors to the intricate choreography of the bullfight and its strange connection to the Inquisition, Kennedy meditates on a culture that we may not countenance or fully understand but which is made riveting by the precision of her prose and the passion and humor of her narrative.
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Customer Reviews (17)

Blows Hemingway out of the water
When I started researching bullfights in Spain everyone pointed to "Death in the Afternoon" by Papa Hemingway (as Kennedy calls him).I didn't even know Kennedy wrote this book, but my small town library had the prescience to stock this little volume in the bullfighting section, next to the Oxford University Press's official history and the Hemingway work.I thanked God for the librarian - whoever he or she may be - for ordering this book.Reading this was a godsend - marvelously written, the kind of book you borrow, and then rush off to buy a copy of just to keep.It is very powerful and haunted me for days.It was one of those moments when I really really truly thank our public libraries (our taxpayer dollars at work) - would not have discovered this book otherwise, on the web, on Kindle, etc.

A very informative and interesting read
I was in the process of researching bullfighting when I came across this book.I read it from cover to cover.This is an amazing and intimate account of a woman from outside of the Spanish bullfighting world coming to terms with its mystique, barbarism, and ceremony in highly readable and compelling terms.

Her journey through Spain, and especially her trip by rail to Granada and the home of Lorca, was insightful and haunting in its detail of a society's need to cling to its traditions.The history of the bullfight and the author's personal story of physical and mental anguish were well matched, and the experience of this book has stayed with me long after finishing its pages.

Real insights on bullfighting
There is very little taurine literature worth reading, specially in English.There is the dysfunctional American hotdog of the Hemingway type, busting with alcoholised mysticism, or else the false aficionado of the Barnaby Conrad sort, trading in stale myth-making and half-digested pseudosociology. Books of this kind proliferated in the 50s.

A L Kennedy writes instead an extended essay, full of real insights, in which she relates bullfighting to mankind's [sometimes unconscious, often not] preocupation with death. She does this withoutgrandiosity or bombastic sententiousness, or even that tiresome female one-upmanship. The fact that she is very obviously an Anglo-saxon woman may grate on some readers; then again, the freshness of her point of view would not be the same if she were a classically-educated, conservative Spaniard speaking of a long-cherished, unquestioned value. It is this freshness that makes her contribution interesting.

The volume is perhaps poorly edited, but make no mistake: it is one of the few books on bullfighting worth reading. A minor classic.

Overwrought (but informative)
This book is written in language that some might mistake for fluid, inventive prose - but it's labored and overwrought.It doesn't help that the subject matter continually returns to the author's health and ill-spirit, or that every problem in her life can be conveniently and neatly tied to bullfighting.A typical passage will open with her problems, then segue with something like "...but I won't think about my aching back, instead I'll distract myself with the story of xyz bullfighter who I just saw some film of..." and will then return to her issues with life.The suicide thing is, frankly, a cliche.Ending with the positive - she does a good job of delineating the history and the terminology as it would naturally become accessible to the first-timer.

A Writer's Corrida
A.L.Kennedy's extraordinary book leads us from her own near-suicide in Scotland to the gaiety of the Fiesta Brava in Spain. Her work is here somewhat shaped by her own ill-health, and much of the book is a meditation on death. Do not be put off by this idea, for the whole thing is exquisitely written and makes use of unusually moving images: the result is positivley inspirational. Kennedy has studied toreo in great detail, and has a good grasp of her subject; she neither condones nor condemns. My only criticism is that the book runs out of steam towards the end when the author relies less on her stunning abstract and philosophical ideas, and gives a semi-journalistic account of the corrida. There has been a lot of very bad literature about bullfighting (including some by Hemingway!) but Ms. Kennedy's book is of the highest quality, well researched and written, and deserves a very wide audience. ... Read more

Product Description
The matador flourishes his cape, the bull charges, the crowd cheers: this is the image of Spain best known to the world.But while the bull has long been a symbol of Spanish culture, it carries more meaning than has previously been recognized. In this book, anthropologist Carrie B. Douglass views bulls and bullfighting as a means of discussing fundamental oppositions in Spanish society and explains the political significance of those issues for one of Europe's most regionalized countries.In talking about bulls and bullfighting, observes Douglass, one ends up talking not only about differences in region, class, and politics in Spain but also about that country's ongoing struggle between modernity and tradition.She relates how Spaniards and outsiders see bullfighting as representative of a traditional, irrational Spain contrasted with a more civilized Europe, and she shows how Spaniards' ambivalence about bullfighting is actually a way of expressing ambivalence about the loss of traditional culture in a modern world.To fully explore the symbolism of bulls and bullfighting, Douglass offers an overview of Spain's fiesta cycle, in which the bull is central.She broadly and meticulously details three different fiestas through ethnographic fieldwork conducted over a number of years, delineating the differences in festivals held in different regions.She also shows how a cycle of these fiestas may hold the key to resolving some of Spain's fundamental political contradictions by uniting the different regions of Spain and reconciling opposing political camps--the right, which holds that there is one Spain, and the left, which contends that there are many.Bulls, Bullfighting, and Spanish Identities is an intriguing study of symbolism used to examine the broader anthropological issues of identity and nationhood.Through its focus on the political discourse of bulls and bullfighting, it makes an original contribution to understanding not only Spanish politics but also Spain's place in the modern world. ... Read more

Product Description
Ernest Hemingway, is best-known to layman and aficionado alike for his fiction and related prose accounts of bullfighting (toreo) as a cross between romantic risk and a drunken party. He sees it as an elaborate substitute for war, ending in wounds or death. Although Hemingway's descriptions of the "beauty" in toreo are lyrical, they are short on imaginative creation of how such beauty, through technique and discipline, comes about. John McCormick sorts through the complexities of toreo, to suggest the aesthetic, social, and moral dimensions of an art that is geographically limited, but universal when seen in round.

While attracted to Hemingway's approach, McCormick knew that he was being seduced by elements that had little to do with toreo. To try to right Hemingway's distortions, he named the first edition of this book The Complete Aficionado, but then realized that the volume was directed at a wider readership. Bullfighting is written from the point of view of the torero, as opposed to the usual spectator's impressions and enthusiasm. With the help of a retired matador de toros, Mario Sevilla Mascareas, who taught McCormick the rudiments of toreo as well as the emotions and discipline essential to survival, the author rescues toreo from romantic clichs. He probes the anatomy of the matador's training and technique, provides a past-and-present survey of the traditions of the corrida, and furnishes dramatic portraits of such famous figures as Manolete, Joselito, Belmonte, and Ordez. Here is an informed analysis and critique of the origins and myths of toreo and a survey of the literature it has inspired. Defending the faith in a lively as well as clear and discerning manner, this volume provides a committed and vivid approach to the rich history, ritual, and symbolism of the bullfight.This edition includes a new introduction by the author. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Beginners Guide to the Corrida
Mr McCormick has updated his classic guide to bullfighting from the 1960's. As a beginner's guide it is indispensible, giving a full history of the corrida, and putting the traditions in their true social perspective, which will probably come as a shock to the animal rights people. The author collaborated with a celebrated matador in compiling the book, and even learned toreo, so there is great authority behind what he says. The illustrations, by a talented Colombian artist, are clear, and all the terms are explained. There is surely no better introduction to this noble art.

if you like arrogance
i bought this book to learn a little more about bullfighting. you get that but you have to wade through the author's view of the world to get to it. for every sentence that will help you understand the toreo you have to read 5 pages of the author's view on life, art and other. i don't really care about his views and wanted more professional insight. their is no glossary to help with the hundreds of terms. he defines the word one time and if you get confused on the word later, you have to flip back to find the definition. he gives the reason for this by saying he is writing for an educated audience. he then proceeds through the rest of the book to look down his nose at the reader as though their is no way the reader is as smart as him. he bashes Hemingway which i did not like. to hear him tell it he is smarter and a better writer than Hemingway. i am more interested in this subject as a hobby right now than any other and i had to force my way through this one. still looking for a good one

if you like arrogance
i bought this book to learn a little more about bullfighting. you get that but you have to wade through the author's view of the world to get to it. for every sentence that will help you understand the toreo you have to read 5 pages of the author's view on life, art and other. i don't really care about his views and wanted more professional insight. their is no glossary to help with the hundreds of terms. he defines the word one time and if you get confused on the word later, you have to flip back to find the definition. he gives the reason for this by saying he is writing for an educated audience. he then proceeds through the rest of the book to look down his nose at the reader as though their is no way the reader is as smart as him. he bashes Hemingway which i did not like. to hear him tell it he is smarter and a better writer than Hemingway. i am more interested in this subject as a hobby right now than any other and i had to force my way through this one. still looking for a good one

Toreo arrogance
This book was written because the author wanted a book credit to his name, not to inform the public.There is a lot of valuable information that one has to dig for among the literary mish mash.

Snobish
There are two major flaws that make this book at times unreadable, and at times unbearable.The first problem is a conscious decision by the author not to include a glossary of terms in the back.The word is defined only once, "From that point on, we use that phrase in Spanish in a missionary effort to encourage the non-Spanish speaker to associate the word with the concept."In other words, the author is going to make the reader learn Spanish bullfight terms.But oh so many terms, every possible term ever that ever applied to the bullfight, a staggering number of terms. The first 180 pages is a minefield of Spanish terms. What is so maddening, is that if you find a term on page 60 that hasn't been used since page 20, you look up the term in the index, find it is referenced to page 20, turn to page 20, and maybe it is defined in the footnote, or maybe you have to reread the entire page to find the definition, or maybe you find that, as I did several times, that although page 20 is the first use of the term, it is not defined anywhere. The author is not so much trying to teach as he is trying to show off, and the author's ego is the real theme of this book.

That covers the first 180 pages; the last 90 pages are worse, because of the second major flaw in the book: The author's snobish and elitsit attitude that no one can enjoy a bullfigt unless they know as much as he does, and anyone enjoying a bullfight who does not know as much is a simple peon or one of the easily duped masses; furthermore just about everybody who ever wrote anything about bullfighting was wrong.McCormick tries to list every book and author and what was wrong and how it could have been better if they had only known as much as McCormick.

If you notice the book review section above, the name Hemingway is mentioned is mentioned 4 times.That is because McCormick has an obsession to prove that Hemingway's work about bullfighting was not really that good after all. It is apparent that McCormick wants to be the new Boss of Bullfighting, it becomes comical how he goes out of is way to knock down Hemingway in this book constantly.

If you see at least 4 or 5 bullfights a year, this book may have some value to you. There is technical information on bulls and bull breading, the exact names of passes and styles, but it is buried far below the authors ego; you'll have to work to make it useful. I have read Hemingway's Death In The Afternoon, it's the best book so far for understanding bullfighting; unless you live in Spain or Mexico, don't bother with this one. ... Read more

Product Description
When Bulls Cry: The Case Against Bullfighting is, as the title suggests, a work that puts the bullfight on trial and finds it guilty of extreme brutality and cruelty to animals. This is no legal brief, however. It is written from an historian's point of view. Michael A. Ogorzaly has researched the bullfight, from its origins to the present, and with this book he exposes the rot that pervades the bullfight world. From the writings of Ernest Hemingway to the videos of Madonna, nothing that espouses bullfighting is spared. Not even the Three Stooges escape his glare. Furthermore, notions of the bullfight's artistry and morality are debunked. Only those who have opposed bullfighting, from monarchs to writers to animal-rights activists, are treated gently. His intention is to dissuade the audience from ever attending a bullfight, the sooner to hasten its abolition.The time is right for such a work. In France, a history of the bullfight in Europe was published recently by art historian Elisabeth Hardouin-Fugier. Moreover, in April 2005, a proposal to ban bullfighting was introduced in the Parliament in Catalonia, an autonomous region of Spain. His Holiness the Dalia Lama, who backs the bill, also supports the WSPA (World Society for Protection of Animals) campaign, "Culture Without Cruelty." Other supporters of the campaign include Dr. Jane Goodall and Sir Paul McCartney. Obviously, the anti-bullfigting campaign is a worldwide one.Ogorzaly's book is the first one like it in English. This work should be of interest not only to people concerned about the suffering of animals and the increase of violence in the world, but to anyone who reads cultural and intellectual history. The book could also be used as a text for college courses in Spanish and Latin American History as well as courses on Ethics or Animal Rights. ... Read more

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In "Blood Sport", Timothy Mitchell describes how public animal slaughter came to occupy a central place in the world view of one Western nation. Unlike books that romanticize matadors or mystify their "art", "Blood Sport" restores bullfighting to its social and historical context. It explores both the primitive passions of rural fiestas and the harsh process of selection that lies behind the urban bullfight as we know it today. The text attempts to unravel the strands of religion, class conflict, nationalism, political corruption and machismo that make bullfighting a microcosm of Spanish society. The physical and psychological trauma of matadors are also probed, and an engrossing discussion of blood sport in ancient Rome enables the reader to grasp the "pornographic" fascination that bullfighting holds for masses of spectators. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A must have in any bullfighting aficionado's library!
This book is an extrodinary look at the Spanish corrida, and any bull-fighting aficionado, or even novice in the field, should read this!

Fascinating sociological look at Spanish Bullfighting
Astutely written sociological study of the Spanish Corrida de Toros.This work takes you back behind the surface presentation of the Corrida to understand the historical and sociological context of the Corrida and perhaps why it continues to be more popular than ever in modern Spain. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Rodeos and Bull Riding
About this book ( Bull Riding and Rodeos ) I think this book sounds excellent, and challenging to read and for others. I am a student and I have to do a paragraph about bull riding and rodeos. I actually feel that this book will be a great resource to use.

Also the book itself sounds amazing and full of interesting facts about bulls and their position as they do their dance in the ring. One thing that I do know is that bull riding is the one dangerous sports to do, but their is a huge commitment in doing this, and you have to know in what you are doing. ... Read more

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Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

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198 pages ... Read more