Tim Robbins Books

Gee, How exciting to be the first and only reviewer of this item.
First as a girl who grew up listening to lots of old radio shows
with my Dad--this is a nice reminder. This is a radio
based satirical game show with the topic being the story of
Christopher Columbus. The two contestants use whatever audiotory means to convey this to the audience. I giggled the entire time
as I listened to it on my headphones--so much my husband had to
leave the room to avoid my laughter. As everyone knows I just
love Tim Robbins. This is done by him based from another man's
book. For those who are fans of his know about a group he formed
as a young man called the "Actor's Gang" Most if not all of these
folks are involved in this project. Tim Robbins as always shines
in this. I myself--although happily married enjoy curling up in
comfy spot and hearing Tim's sexy voice. This is truly a fun
thing to listen to. I think you will enjoy it:)

whenever I am asked what is my favortie movie I would always answer "Ordinary People".....for years no one could find it. Even my friend that can find anything couldn't find it...I am so glad you had it.
this is a great movie about FAMILY and how they deal or in the case of mom do not deal with tragic life moments. Rated R back in the '80's would probably get a PG13 today.
disturbing on some levels if you have been through or are going through similar situtations

I have always liked this film, ever since I saw it in the theatre in 1980 when it was released. It's painful to watch the scenes between the obedient son and a mother who cannot and will not emote love to her child, who is clearly in need of it. As the parent of a teenage son who is suffering from depression , it's sometimes cathartic to watch this film and try to understand the pain felt by Conrad and the guilt over losing his beloved brother. The tension between mother and son with the neutral father looking on, trying to give love and be available to both of them is acting at its best.

Robert Redford's "Ordinary People" is one of the compelling movies ever made portraying a family's unravelling after the loss of a loved one. The acting is superb. The script is beyond reproach, based on a best-selling novel. This film received several well-deserved Oscars. A true masterpiece!

Never in my life have I subjected my eyes and brain to anything so disgustingly pretentious as this movie. The acting is okay- a little overdone in my opinion, but acceptable- but no acting could save such a dreary plot. I found myself wishing all the characters would commit suicide in some colorful fashion- that's really the only ending that would have pleased me. I don't see how this movie could appeal to anyone but upper middle class WASPS; to anyone else these people are not ordinary, they are whiny bitches living far more privileged lives than they deserve. I don't mean to downplay the emotions that go along with losing a loved one, but I think that most people are too busy trying to make ends meet to obsess about it as single-mindedly as these people do. Most people might very well get terribly depressed, but I think they would do it with a little more dignity than this contemptible lot. I can't emphasize enough how utterly unlikable these characters were. What's worse, I couldn't even hate them- I only felt scorn. And if you don't care about a character, you can't possibly care about what happens to them. I would give this film 0 stars if I could.

Every family isn't perfect, and has its issues. Some families have scars and pain that threaten to destroy them, like the family in this film: three ordinary people.

I had never seen Ordinary People until recently. I was a teen when it appeared in movie theaters. The film got Academy Awards for Director (Robert Redford, his first directing venture), Adapted Screenplay (Alvin Sargent), and Supporting Actor (Timothy Hutton). Mary Tyler Moore was nominated as Best Actress for her very solid performance as the complex and flawed Beth Jarrett. Judd Hirsch got a nod for Supporting Actor.

What strikes me about this film is that it is brimming over with tension.
Wife and mother Beth maintains her well adjusted appearance at all costs, even if it means alienating her immediate family. She has swept her pain and grief under the rug. Wound up very tightly like a perfect bow on a gift, she is chiefly concerned with keeping up appearances and a life that seems normal and content. She shuns the truth and emotions. Vacations and golf help her stay numb and distracted. Her husband Calvin knows that things are not right, but will not admit it to himself. He is in denial about his family, and about how he truly feels.
The film's core is teenaged son Conrad; he is eaten up by his massive guilt over a family tragedy. Normally it should be the best time of his life. But he is a walking open sore, a raw nerve. Beth and Conrad are both repressed in many ways. She keeps a frosty distance from him, not even showing her child affection of any kind. He loses the friendship of his best buddy in school because of his angst and antisocial tendencies. Ironically, a good friend is the one thing that Conrad desperately needs at the moment, although he doesn't realize it. He refuses to reach out to others to help him endure the immense pain and conflict. There is heavy dysfunction in this family.

Every performance is exceptional among the four main characters. But I believe the most interesting has to be Mary Tyler Moore's role. It is not easy to convey what her character is about. She has to walk a thin line between mother and monster. This is not a big, showy role. Far from it. There are so many subtle qualities and nuances to the character. Everything Moore does is spot on: body language, posture, expressions. It must have been a real challenge for this actress, after years of playing perky Mary Richards in a sitcom on TV. She really showed her acting chops here in Ordinary People.

I must confess that throughout this film I felt a growing hatred for the character of Beth. But then I realize that she has gone through hell and just doesn't know how to cope any longer. She is a sad soul, and the worst part is that her life seems so normal from the outside... but inside she has died a bit. And it's damage that can't be undone.

This is such a simple movie but it is so powerful. It's a very realistic portrayal of a family that's crumbling. If you like good drama and haven't seen this, it's well worth viewing.

The book is lovely, it includes the script, a foreward by Paul Newman, wonderful photos and historical background. A must have for fans of the movie. However, the hardcover version of this book has only 150 pages (including the index) not 208 as advertised, so you are getting more than a quarter less book for your money.

This book includes movie script, many photos and the historical notes about the U.S. in 1930s.

The main plot is as follows: In the age of the Great Depression, the Federal Theater Project gave many U.S. people encouraging entertainment, and gave many actors and artists their jobs. The movement gave birth to Marc Blitzstein's masterpiece 'Cradle Will Rock' (directed by Orson Welles), but the play offended the reactionary congressmen. They made their soldiers lock out the theater. 'Cradle Will Rock,' can't the play see the light? Or...

In addition, the movie has the clash between Diego Rivera and Nelson Rockfeller over the Rockfeller Center's mural, etc. And the book has the detailed background notes of the movie. They are a great help for me. For example, I thought red-hunting movement was made by the Republicans, but it's my misunderstanding. And I learn that Harlem Renaissance (I like Zora Neale Hurston) wasn't an isolated and mutant movement. Etc, etc.

The movie and the book represent artists' courage. In the afterword, Tim Robbins says 'I believe threre are already too many artists who censor themselves.' I, too, think so. Bravo, Tim and his comrades ('gangs'?)! A toast to your brilliance, effort and bravery!

I got this after falling in love with the movie Cradle Will Rock, and it did not fail to amaze me! It balances a script with so much historical information to back it up, insights, and pictures both from the movie and the real moments of Cradle Will Rock. It has informational blurbs about Marc Blitzstein: Composer and Enigma, Orson Welles, Hallie Flanagan, Christopher Marlowe and the questioning of him being a communist, the real Olive Stanton, the death of Vaudeville, Diego Rivera, and so many other things. It also has great pictures from the film, including some candid shots. I used it as a source on my paper on the Federal Theatre Project, it's an excellent source of historical information, but it's also very entertaining to read! The day I got it I spent hours going through it. It's well worth the money, my favorite coffee table book!

Tim Robbins presents both points of view. On the one hand he makes us feel sorry for the victims and their families but on the other hand he makes us feel sorry for the murderer himself Matt Poncelet. There is too little action but too much religious stuff in the book. But still it is a very well written book since it makes people think about the death penalty and if there is any sense for
killing a murderer. The course of the story was very realistic so you can identify with the characters.

The script of Tim Robbins' outstanding film includes footnotes that detail some of inner workings of filmmaking: why some scenes don't work, why some scenes are cut, etc. If you love the movie, certainly one of the best of the 1990's, check this one out, and seek out Sister Helen's original "Dead Man Walking" which inspired the movie.

I'm using this book for a graduate course of Individual and Group Behavior. The book is big (which reminds me of a elementary text book) but the content is worth the space. Each chapter incorporates current, real world examples, useful diagrams, a section of "Point/Counterpoint" discussing the chapter topics, and concludes with "Questions for Review", "Questions for Critical Thinking", "Team Exercise", "Ethical Dilemma" and "Case Incidents" If you get a copy with the CD, you can use it to take self-assessments online using the book. I find this book extremely helpful in my course and it will be on my desk at work when I'm done.

This wasn't a bad text by any means. This fit right in with class, and has really good sections on "Case Studies." This was a text that I didn't find "boring" like so many out there.

This movie keeps the tension fairly high throughout, but the final half-hour gets unrealistically wacky. Although the very surprising ending is dramatic and then.. well, you may find it terriboy unsatisfying. But, I think the whole movie was overdone. I think the actors acted like they were on steroids, especially Jeff Bridges. At the end, you see why they had him acting so hyper, but still, it wasn't realistic. Also, there was more than a whiff of political B.S. -- as you might expect from any movie Tim Robbins is in -- particularly when it comes to painting the FBI as bad guys and the fanatics as right-wingers. This is one of those movies you'll forget about ten minutes after it ends.

Although I rented this movie a while back, I still rememeber most of
the "action". You see, there was once a song, and a line from that song
says, "paranoia strikes deep, into your life it will creep." Well, the
Jeff Bridges character (who teaches terrorism at the local college) starts
wondering about his neighbors. Tim Robbins just happens to be that neighbor. nuff said?
First half of movie drags, but it sets up the second half nicely.
Second half, keep an eye on your neighbor. But, the ending is what is
most dramatic of the whole effort. The ending is what keeps you thinking,
wondering, and instills in us a sense of paranoia that will keep
neighborhoods on their toes for a long time. If you trust your
neighbors, then it's a bad movie. But if there is the slightest doubt,
by all means, an excellent show.

this is a movie you never see coming. It is awesome and everyone should watch it!

This movie grabs you from the beginning and only grips you tighter. by the end i felt out of control. Great movie overall.

Everyone have seen "American History X", which "realistically" portrays what I imagine American screenwriters must think life is like for so-called "Extreme Right-wingers", but while that was a feast of Semitical Correctness gone wild, this particular film is actually quite good. The story centres around a college professor, Michael Faraday played by Jeff Bridges, teaching, among other things, a class on "domestic terrorism". Faraday has recently lost his FBI-wife in an incident involving one of the many "militia groups", but where the blame was squarely on the side of the FBI. Hence, he is a bitter man, bearing a grudge against the FBI, but trying to live his life as normal, for the sake of his lonely nine year old son.

After saving the life of the neighbours' son, (the Lang's) he befriends them, and within their family his isolated son finds a new friend in the Lang's son. Eventually, he grows suspicious of his neighbour (Oliver Lang played by Tim Robbins) and his past, and starts to suspect he is in fact a member of the "Far Right" and is plotting an attack on the Federal Government. But unlike most films from the hands of Hollywood, these "extremists" are actually portrayed as normal people with a just cause, not the drooling maniacs we're usually served in every second film, so to speak. As Faraday says himself in one of his classes, most people in American history of any note would today be labelled "terrorists", and would certainly have taken up arms a long time ago, if they were alive today.

Unlike the ending of American History X, which was completely defeatist and meaningless, this one actually ends well for the good people. Sometimes you wonder how a film such as this made it through censorship, but I guess they think we should feel all "horrified" at the idea of someone actually having faith in God, higher causes and wanting to change the future for something better. Well, they failed.

Recommended. 4 stars.

Received book in excellent condition and in a timely manner!I would not hesitate to order from the seller again.

This is a great book to understand the fundamentals of organizational behaviour. It is simple to understand, and the excellent layout and graphics make it enjoyable and ignite your curiosity. I read it from cover to cover in a matter of days. However, I do agree that more relevant case studies and applications should have been included.

Robbins discusses current OB theory in a brief, concise manner. He does not provide many examples of real-teime applications, however. This is a hinderance to the book's usefulness as it is sometimes difficult to conceptualize how many of the theories might be practically implemented. Overall, a decent reference book.

I find Robbins's OB one of the best introductionary books for OB. Though it does not contain lots of case studies, to get started with concepts, the easy to read layout and the interesting activities that he presents makes it a very good book to get started. I personally started my OB with a much more detailed book, but after I found this one, I used this as the starting point, to get the ideas, and then used more high level books to explore further.
Why not 5 stars, well, coz as I said, I did need to look at other books to explore in detail!

This was my first experience ordering a College Textbook on Amazon. I ordered a brand new book and CD and was very pleased to receive my order in time for my class. Most important I was able buy a brand new textbook at a used textbook price. I liked being able to provide my credit card information to an Amazon rep by phone rather than send it over the Internet. I plan to use Amazon again for my future requirements.

Recently I took a course about Organizational Behavior & this was the course textbook. It's a reasonable choice for an introductory course. I found it easy to read & informative. However, the accompanying SAL CD-ROM was disappointing - I didn't think it was worth the effort.

Bottom line - I would recommend it.

Ok, first off, The Great Gatsby is a great book that somehow reached me back in high school when I loved it even though I was forced to read it... That is indeed a rarity, and is why I've read it quite a few times since then.. I even used Monarch/Cliff notes with this book -- for its intended purpose, and not just to get enough information, so I can pass a test... So the book is great, but you should all know that by now..

Tim Robbins' narration is for the most part, beautifully done... His characterization of Nick Carraway is so captivating and I can really get into the story when Nick is speaking.. The only problem is that Mr. Robbins kinda softens his voice where you have to raise the volume... Which causes some problems when he switches characters - especially to Tom Buchanan, whom Mr Robbins YELLS his lines, causing me to quickly reach for the volume knob in the car...

Theres quite a few characters in this book, and I think Mr. Robbins just ran out of voices.. Some of his characterizations, particularly women, are HORRIBLE. I'll cut him some slack since he's a guy, but if you want to hear the worst stereotypical Long Island (and Southern) female voices, he's nailed it..

Don't let this ruin it for you though, his narration otherwise is one of the best I've heard yet...

This is a wonderful reading of the Great AMerican Novella...."The Great Gatsby" , includes exerts from F.Scotts correspondence with potential publishers and friends...reveals his enormous ego, as well as his insecurity and need for public adoration of this work.

I would suggest this as "required" listening for all high school and above students and human beings. I feel, that if we all read, or listened, to "the Great Gatsby", we would see what true good story telling is, and maybe about half of the "crap" at the movies would go away!

received damaged and returned. amazon did not have another copy to send. the $5.00 creidit was mostly offset by my being sharged for shipping. a very unsatisfactory experience

I have listened to only a few tracks of this book-on-CD, and maybe I should wait for a while before posting a review, but here is what I can already say. First, while Scott Fitzgerald is clearly a great writer, he writes about characters who are so far from who I am and I care about that I wonder if I will ever really like his novels. I have read "This side of paradise" before listening to this one, and found it equally uninteresting. Almost everyone seems to be an obnoxious and spoiled character. There is way too much aristocracy, money and privilege, and I find all characters rather fake. BUT, what is worse about this CD is... Tim Robbins. He reads mostly with an annoyingly low, dreamy voice, playing all women with a terrible fake-feminine voice which really seems to come from a drag queen. I will never understand why so many men have to read women's voices as if words were spoken by a drag queen. Overall, this is a pretty bad audio book.

Tim Robbins does an excellent job reading this book! Well worth the purchase.

gooood

I thought this book would be more representative of the sensationalist reporting the media has been shoving down the throats of Americans for the last few years. Instead, this book essentially says there is not enough of this over-sensationalized baloney, and it begs that the media produce more in the name of our founding fathers.

If you dare to go there, check this out from the library. This drivel is not worth your hard earned money.

The war is a tragedy and the media coverage of the 2004 presidential election was a farce. That is part of what Nichols and McChesney are telling us in this very readable and important book. More saliently they warn that unless the media reassumes its responsibility to tell the truth about how our government operates and about what it is doing that it hides from us, there is a danger that our democracy will be destroyed.

I have been hearing the lie about the "liberal bias" of the press for as long as I can remember. It is a lie told and retold, screamed and ranted about by the actual media powers that be, those who work for Sinclair Broadcasting, Clear Channel, Fox News--the entire Murdoch empire and more--the O'Reilly's, the Limbaugh's, the Ollie North's, the Scarborough's, the Beck's, the evangelical demagogues, the shrill shock jocks of AM radio, the editorial writers at the Wall Street Journal, and even some people working for the New York Times and the Washington Post. Behind these voices of deception are the conservative and controlling owners of our media and their corporate sponsors, people who merely want to massage and indoctrinate the populous into compliant couch potatoes who will buy their products and hail to the chief and not rock the boat.

Recently there have been a slew of books belatedly exposing this lie. Tragedy and Farce is yet another such tome, but in some ways it is among the best of the bunch. Nichols and McChesney take a historical perspective, showing how journalism has gone from 19th century Hearst jingoism to an eclectic array of publications in the heyday of the American press in the early 20th century to the docile and sycophantic reporters who work for today's mass media. An important and at times laugh out loud funny part of the book are the cartoons by Tom Tomorrow. His insightful satire and parody of our political elites and media mavens nicely complement the text.

But do Nichols and McChesney go far enough? They assert there is "a crisis in journalism" and they point to the recent consolidation of media, to the monopolistic franchises and subsidies that some media enjoy (p. 173) thanks to their financial, editorial, and news spin support of various politicians, especially those in the Bush Administration. They warn that "big media plays a well-marked role in defining the choices from which America's two major parties select their nominees for president." (p. 91) And they remind us that so tight is that media control that no third party candidate has more than a remote chance of ever becoming president. But what I would say is replace "big media" in the quote with "corporate America" and change "well-marked role" to "absolutely controlling role" and we are closer to the awful truth.

The plain fact is that we have a democracy by capitalism in this country, that there is no chance for any candidate to achieve the highest office who is not in the pocket of, and whose mind is not to some extent controlled by, the corporate structure that actually runs America. Big media is only one branch, albeit an essential one, of that structure. Until the mass media is non-commercial nothing will change. How could it? How can the average reporter go against the hand that feeds him or her? The authors note what happened to Phil Donahue at MSNBC when he "represented a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war." (p. 86) He was cancelled. If Donahue cannot go against his bosses how can we expect the reporter on the beat to write what he knows Murdoch or the corporate sponsors do not want to hear?

Apropos is this delicious quote from Theodore Dreiser: "The American press, with very few exceptions, is a kept press. Kept by the big corporations the way a whore is kept by a rich man." (p. 93)

The worst of all the big offenders of course is Fox News and their Orwellian "fair and balanced" slogan. Yes, ignorance really is strength (that is, the ignorance of the populous) and the bigger the lie the better. Noting that Fox News was "actually more gung-ho in its support of the war than US government entities like Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty" the authors quote Russ Baker as saying that the Fox News Channel is "a kind of Gong Show of propaganda." (p. 86) (Yeah, but not nearly as funny.)

The authors call "repugnant" the notion that "the great unwashed mass needs to be bathed in a cocktail of propaganda and lies, decontextualized half-truths, and jingoism..." (pp. 85-86) But what is even more insightful is to realize that in creating a compliant, ignorant, indoctrinated and sloganized electorate, the last thing you want is for them to be told the unpleasant truth, and so you have to lie. Having created the sheep, you don't want to apprise them of the wolves, the shearing, or the slaughterhouse.

One final quote: "The years of the Bush presidency will be remembered as a time when American media, for the most part, practiced stenography to power..." (p. 84)

Read this book, by all means, and work toward the de-commercialization of media because only when those who have the responsibility and privilege of addressing mass audiences are free to tell the truth will we as a people be free.

I was disappointed by this book.

While generally sympathetic to its conclusions, I was expecting a systematic examination of exactly what the title purported to promise, namely, "How the American Media Sell Wars..."

Instead what I got was a broad hodge-podge of sweeping statements that oftentimes read like a blog post -- of over two hundred pages.

The authors seem to realize this when at the conclusion of the critical 2nd Chapter titled "The Crisis in Journalism", they write:

"We concede that this has been a sweeping discussion of journalism, and we have had to use broad brush strokes. We believe our core argument survives more detailed examination, and it would certainly be qualified and enriched by more detail and nuance." (p.35)

This level of examination doesn't stop them in the very next chapter from "drawing upon the foundation laid in chapter 2" as if sweeping assertions in one chapter could support sweeping assertions in the next without ever having to come back down to planet earth to have a closer look.

The book is completely riddled with un-sourced and undocumented conclusions which you either agree with or not but which the authors simply announce without bothering to prove.

The situation in newsrooms "is not unlike the newsroom in Pravda or Tass in the old Soviet Union" (p.32). Media coverage of Colin Powell's speech at the UN "could not have been exceeded by Stalin's stooges" (p.59). While all of this sounds great, you're entitled to wonder in a book that places so much emphasis on journalistic standards what exactly the authors know about Pravda, Tass or "Stalin's stooges".

In sum, this isn't a book that's particularly strong from a journalistic or research standpoint. The conclusions might make you happy but you're none the wiser as to the reasons why. The fact that magazines like The Nation, In These Times or Mother Jones haven't reviewed it also isn't a good sign. My copy is going straight into the trash.

Most of the previous reviews give a fairly accurate description of this book.
There is less hard news and more soft news now. There is increased concentration
of media power, fewer firms with many more outlets. There are far fewer foreign
bureaus and reporters. There are more opinions presented as news. This is bad
and I agree.

The bulk of the book is examples of how the media misbehave, and that is the
weakness. Almost all the examples show a strong liberal bias. Media concentration
has been going on for decades, with much of it during Clinton's terms, but it is
all blamed on Bush(43). Most of the references to Republicans, GOP, conservatives,
media corporations, and other corporations include a negative adjective, often
"lying" or "corrupt". The media should check the claims of the right, for they
always lie. There were no calls to doubt the claims of the left. At least there
was no claim that the left never lies. But it was close. Everything the Swift
Boat Veterans said was wrong. Everything Rather said was true; the only mistake
CBS made was picking the wrong evidence to present. There is no liberal bias
in main stream media. The main stream media has a very strong conservative bias,
except for FOX which is even worse.

Even liberals that want to believe all the accusations, can not use the book as a
reference in their battles with conservatives. There is no index to find the
accusation you want to use. There is a six page bibliography, but no notes in the
text to find the source, nor notes in the bibliography to refer back to where
the information was used.

The last chapter tells how to try to correct this bad situation. It shares the
bias weakness. There are references to organizations that are working to correct
some of the media problems, such as moveon.org and FAIR. Apparently, no conservative
thinks there is any problem with the media.

The star rating is an average. The book is worth five stars for the importance of
the topic, but only one star for the presentation. There are better books about
problems with the media. There are better books about the evils of big business.
There are even better "I hate Republicans" books.