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This is the catalogue for the landmark Pollock exhibition held at the Moma and the Tate in 1998-1999. Considering the steep rise in the insurance value of Pollock's paintings, such a comprehensive retrospective is not likely to be repeated in the near future and we are therefore fortunate to have such a brilliant book to help us remember it. The late Kirk Varnedoe was one of the best interpreters of contemporary American art and his text, never anecdotical and always informative without being pedantic, does justice to the masterpieces without falling into any of the cliches that often pollute our view of this great artist.

Beautiful illustrations make this book an indispensable presence in any arts library.

Having just taken in the MoMA show, I was very satisfied with the Pollock catalog. Very nice job reproducing the works (a difficult task in the printing of art catalogs!) Many fold-outs assist in conveying the size of Pollock's larger works. Large, full-bleed detail shots add a nice touch, complimenting the entire painting. While I'm not thrilled with the cover design, the interior is well-written, well-presented, and well-worth reading.

I picked this book up at the MOMA Pollock retrospective a couple years ago and have used it extensively. Having seen many of the paintings in this book firsthand, I can say that these are some of the best reproductions offerred in book form on Pollock's work. Another plus is that several paintings are printed on fold-out pages, so that the work doesn't cross the book's seam. So many of his paintings are extremely wide that this makes a lot of sense (otherwise, there would be hardly any resolution in the height dimension).

If you're interested in Pollock and need to refer to the reproductions, I absolutely recommend this book above all others out there.

This breathtaking catalogue is simply the best single volume available on Jackson Pollock, and this is primarily--but not only--because of the number and quality of the reproductions it offers. Almost every one of the dozen or so Pollock books in my library contains a painting not available in the others, but this book collects and beautifully photographs the greatest number and variety of his canvases--outside of a catalogue raisonee.

As the other reviewers state, there are many generously-sized fold-out pages here, and the crispness and resolution of these big reprints and of the more modest pages are simply amazing. To take two essential examples, this book's reprints of "One: Number 31, 1950" and "Blue Poles: Number 11, 1952" are astoundingly clear, better than any of the many other versions I've seen in art books, even in Ellen Landau's large-format survey, a book which also includes gatefolds.

(Another reviewer, by the by, states that "Lucifer" is not available in any other book, which is not true. Among other places, it appears in Landau, in Elizabeth's Frank's concise volume, and as the sole color reproduction in the book for the 1965 MOMA retrospective. Anyway, it gets terrific treatment here.)

Another invaluable inclusion in this book is a great number of full-sized detail photos of the canvases. For example, on a page adjacent to "Lucifer" and "Autumn Rhythm" and "Full Fathom Five," we see another photo of just one small section of that same painting but in 1-to-1 scale; these details reveal much of the dynamic, kinetic, urgent quality of these works, their encrustations of sand, glass, pennies, paint caps--traits which even this book could otherwise never offer a livingroom Pollock-viewer.

Further, having seen the exhibit in January of 1999, I can attest to the generally excellent fidelity of the color-balance. (Curiously, no one seems to be able to capture "Autumn Rhythm"'s grey-teal passages in a book, but if you were at this show or have viewed the painting at the Met you've seen them.)

The accompanying articles are excellent. Kirk Varnedoe overviews of Pollock's life, artistic aims, his accomplishments, all illustrated with family and archival photographs and drawing on Pollock quotations. Pepe Karmel uses the extensive photographic and film record of Pollock painting to analyze Pollock's physical movements. Most wonderful are Karmel's computer reconstructions of early states of the painting "Autumn Rythm," based on Hans Namuth's photos of Pollock at work.

In sum, this book gives the finest, fullest offering of both Pollock's life and art.

Excellent companion piece to the MOMA show (which traveled to London's Tate) goes beyond all other Pollock explorations. A "must" for students of modern American art as well as those just wanting to get a better understanding of what Pollock was REALLY DOING.

Large format features fold-out reproductions of breathtakingly high quality. Among these, incredibly, are paintings not found in any other published sources. (The incomparable Lucifer (1947) is one such work).

The text is scholarly but readable, and although there is a considerable amount of it, each open page of writing offers at least a couple relevant and highly interesting photos or other illustrations. The many large color plates would certainly make a gorgeous and impressive coffee table book for anyone who doesn't choose to read it.

Kirk Varnedoe writes definitively about Pollock's mercurial life & career. Varnedoe's nearly 75 pages of biographical analysis are a welcome alternative to the kind of misguided mythologizing about Pollock that has for a long time colored the artist as an overrated art "star."

Pepe Karmel's contribution to this book is an amazing analysis of Pollock's painting process through an exhaustive examination of the famous films and photographs of Pollock at work. This was a fascinating, ground-breaking part of the exhibition, and is equally wonderful in the book.

Well worth the price.

Certainly one of the best series of commentaries that I have seen. I have several sets in my PC Study Bible software and have used others in the past, not to mention the others in our church library. This set has impressed me the most. When the new volumes come out, you can be sure they will be at the top of my list.

Whenever I go to the library to do some research for a sermon, I always use the Interpreter's series both old and new... I own a few volumes at home and looking forward to obtaining more... they are a great resource of information... I recommend these volumes to the serious students of the Gospel... If you want more, here it is...

These volumes are the best commentaries I have ever used, they are in depth and easily used by laymen and clergy alike.I would highly recommend them to any serious bible student.Nothing else is close to them.

"The Crafting and Use of Ritual Tools" contains all the information you will need to craft your own wands, staffs, and ritual daggers. Construction details are in step-by-step format, and the authors have included guidelines for adding personalized decorations. Highly recommended!

Don't hesitate - get a copy of this book. It is the absolute best guide I've read on how to make and use your own spiritual and magical ritual tools. Why pay a lot of money for commerically made tools? It's fun to make your own! Learn how to make and use a ritual staff, wand, rune set, medicine shield, athame, and more.

This is one of the best short stories I have read in a long while. The craftsmanship and use of language is poetic; the story line is engaging, familiar, funny, and poignant. A must read - and a good choice, I think, for anyone studying the genre of the short story.

this is a potent demonstration of what a really exceptional writer can do with apparently all-too-familiar subject matter, in this case, the dysfunctional American family.With a precision and physicality of description that is breathtaking, Saknussemm brings characters and situations to life in way that speaks for an entire generation while also creating a lost and very private world. But beyond the clarity and strength of the language, what sets this story apart is its unique blend of humor and understanding...there is a richness and fullness-and forgiveness to this story, which sharpens both its comic and sad, poignant edges. I will never think of cocktails, hunchbacks, mules, baked beans or death in the same way again.

Lucas Ferrara is a professor at a local law school and probably one of the leading scholars and litigators in the real-estate field. He charges several hundreds of dollars an hour. $5.95 is a steal!

(Although Nancy is right. It doesn't hurt to call!)

A very well written and practical overview of the law. I'm just not sure I would recommend paying $5.95. Why not just call the guy or check his website? Google him!

NEWS OF A NEW HUMAN NATURE is an interesting collection of interviews and articles conducted and written by D. Patrick Miller. Mr. Miller interviews many people in the forefront of the contemporary spiritual movement that was at one time largely known as the "New Age," the roster includes: Charles Tart, Riane Eisler, Malidoma Some, Sobonfu Some, Helen Palmer, Theodore Roszak, Dan Wakefield, Jacob Needleman, to name a few. Miller examines why most interviewed in NEW OF A NEW HUMAN NATURE will not use the term New Age anymore: because it has been cheapened due to poor media representation. New Agers are often thought of as flaky and trend-obsessed rather than serious spiritual seekers. Miller argues that New Agers should be applauded for at least making spiritual awareness a part of contemporary society. Still, that label is going the way of the Dodo. And those interviewed are anything but flaky; they are individuals committed to aiding in creating a spiritual awakening in this society.

The interview with Malidoma Some, which occurs in chapter 16, is my favorite part of NEWS OF A NEW HUMAN NATURE. Malidoma, a spiritual leader from Burkina Faso (West Africa) and author of the book OF WATER AND THE SPIRIT, makes the wise comment that when we speak of saving the environment it is rather backwards that we see it as being something "outside" of our own survival. As Malidoma points out, human existence is only a small blip on the scale of global existence; by destroying the environment we are destroying ourselves. The planet will gladly rebuild once we are gone . . . it's done it before. Malidoma says that when we talk about saving the planet, we need to keep in mind that we are talking about saving our own "[behinds]." Our survival depends on the planet, not the other way around.

The "new age" has gotten a bad rap over the years, and for good reason: there's been a lot of flaky nonsense out there, and a lot of self-delusion. But as reporter Patrick Miller points out, "Many ideas and practices once deemed New Age have never been more influential than they are today." Miller is referring to things like meditation, yoga, and vegetarian diets, but this remarkable book of 25 interviews and essays--culled from an illustrious decades-long career in the "journalism of consciousness"-- covers a much wider gamut than just individual lifestyle choices. Subjects explored here include paths to creativity; therapy for victims of torture; shamanism (homegrown and indigenous varieties); how to do what you love for a living (an extraordinarily comprehensive and well-researched analysis!); "spiritual machines"; how cults exploit--and provide a channel for--the devotional impulse (a thoughtful and most unusual piece, incorporating interviews with a former Moonie and other cult alumni); the relationship between therapy and ecology, altered states of consciousness (of course); and much more.

"Most forms of journalism have a short shelf life of relevance," Miller notes in his introduction. "My aim . . . for this book was to include only information and insights with 'staying power' for years to come." Miller's interviewees include Dean Ornish, Malidoma Some, Theodore Roszak, Ralph Metzner, and Jacob Needleman among others. The pieces in this book were were all published previously in periodicals such as Yoga Journal, The Sun, Intuition, Gnosis, Mother Jones, and Natural Health.

Miller divides the bulk of this book into two "somewhat arbitrary" (he admits) sections: "Changing the Self" and "Changing the World." The first section contains interviews and essays that pertain primarily to "self-work" and personal transformation, while the second section is more concerned with social activism and cultural transformation. There is a third and final section, entitled "Changing Journalism," containing two essays by Miller about the business of news, and his own evolution from a muckraking political journalist in the late '70s to a respectful and open-minded investigator of matters spiritual and unorthodox. Cover to cover, this book is a compelling and--dare I say it?--enlightening tour-de-force!

This a compelling (& still relevant) grouping of criticism, performance history & discussion of compositional choices. The focus on integrating aesthetic production with (some might say subordinating to) active political commitment to social progress is something of an antedote to the melancholic or hibernating sensibility that seems to have haunted & paralyzed much of the avant-garde over the past quarter century. The writing is clear, empassioned and, like the music Cardew et al argue for, concerned with serving its audience - the working class. The almost economistic Marxism is refreshingly very anti-pomo (e.g. the authors see a very clear correspondence between cultural products and the class positions they reveal). Still, what i find most useful about this book is its very provisional, dialectical and self-critical honesty as we are allowed a glimpse of what it is to be a committed artist engaged in active social change. Don't take my word for it; the entire book is available for free download at ubuweb.

While returning home late on a cold night in December 1981, composer Cornelius Cardew was struck by a hit-n-run driver. The situation surrounding his death is indeed opaque, that he may have been murdered by the extreme right-wing working in London. Cardew led a dangerous life, as an activist Marxist. He was arrested for his activities in Camberwell and for a time was homeless,living in a train station in the north of London. The last year of his life he was learning various Asian languages, Pakistani,and Indian to work within those communities against a growing racism,where firebombings of homes was becoming a frequent occurence. He also had an innate gift for organizing rallies and demonstrations against the Right-Wing, and that may have been the cause of his demise. Still he was loved and admired by countless musicians,artists and activists. There were numerous memorial concerts after his death in London,Rome,New York,Toyko, Australia and Chicago, as well as specific pieces written for him in remembrance by Skempton,Curran,Lombardi. This work"Stockhausen serves Imperilaism" was like a cup of hot black coffee for sobering the musical avant-garde when it was written in the early Seventies and it is a shame it is now out-of-print. There is an Italian translation, although next to impossible to obtain.Although Cardew's demeanor, the tenor of his language was a bit extreme, against the avant-garde he once loved and became an important integral part of in England,he believed in the path he had chosen. And here he gives along with Rod Ely and John Tilbury a brief history of The Scratch Orchestra, an odd mixtures of professional and non-professional musicians,conceptual artists,composers from all walks of life. One Scratch credo was"to create music for those who need it". And they frequently did this playing Beethoven Symphonies with whatever means available, piano,two saxophones,one cello, one trumpet and accordeon. Morton Feldman once said of Cardew, that any advancements,any progressive strains for music in England will only come about because of Cardew's efforts. So you might ask "why does Stockhausen serve imperialism?" and not Cage, nor Berio,nor Boulez. Well they all do, and it was Cardew's function here to make known the growing elitism that was becoming part of the avant-garde. To make known the role of the artist. Stockhausen was an consummate example for Cardew's diatribe, a careerist composer(Stockhausen) who expolited the market and musical genres freely obsconding with concepts from Cage,and Cardew and whatever was the current buzz as his hippy=like "Stimmung" where six vocalists sit in a circle intoning the names of lost Indian and Asian gods, or his excursions into graphic notation holdovers from Cage, and more importantly Cardew, his 193 page "Treatise" written in with impeccable craftsmanship of a means toward a structured improvisation. But Cardew's relavance in retrospect of close to 30 years, is he tried to question what the avant-garde was doing and attempted to create a bridge between the advancements of culture and aesthetics and a politics that craved freedom unpretenciously. He began to set Irish and Chinese revolutionary songs for the piano, and made music the central means of his activism. No one to date has really appraised Cardew's political work in culture from within this context, and no one has seriously dealt with the set of problematics of an engaged musical artist. All see him as an ungifted extremist,as critics John Rockwell, Norman Lebrecht,Adrian Jack,Robert Morgan,or Samuel Lipman. In contrast perhaps the current work on Brecht by Frederic Jameson or the writings of Paolo Freire are more vigorous beginningsin attempting to identify the conceptual categories envolved for an engaged political artist. But the New Left today has ceased having an affinity for activism as Cardew espoused, he is like an ancient preserve of an old lost time that few would care to remember or rethink. The opposite theoretical realm of this work would be Derrida's "Spectres of Marx" where activism it seems only exists in the performative realm of thought within the safe confines of the four corners of the page.

I'm a liberal. And so it seems natural for me to think of a Middle East in which Jews and Arabs live in harmony. As a matter of fact, anything else is simply not peace. And that is an opinion Daniel Gordis knows all about.

Gordis starts by pointing out that whether or not Israel can do anything to achieve peace, if its citizens think there is no hope for some sort of peace even for their children, they'll leave. So Israel has to do something.

That means trying to reduce the killing, and it means having Israelis and Arabs living apart, "so that they can stop ruining each others' lives."

Gordis says that Israeli attitudes towards the West Bank need to change. Some Israelis see only the land, and want to keep all of it. Others see only the Arabs, and want to give away all the land. Neither of these attitudes are going to work, no matter how the matter is resolved.

Gordis also advises Israelis to show some pride in winning the second intifada (assuming it does actually reach a viable truce). It is a war that Israel, on the whole, has conducted itself admirably in. Yes, there needs to be a continuation of self-criticism. But the author explains that Israelis also need to avoid internalizing some rather vicious "critiques" from Europe. I agree. It isn't easy to admit that you are right and your opponent is wrong. Oh, it is easy to do so when you want to fight. But it is so tough to do when you want to avoid a fight.

Gordis also says that Israel's population statistics are a "time bomb." I know that almost everyone agrees with him. But I do not. Israel has over five million Jews. They may flee to America or Vanuatu. But they won't be moving to Jordan or Saudi Arabia. There is no reason why ten or eleven thousand square miles should be too much land for five million Jews. Nor is there a reason why the Arabs living there ought not put up with Israel defending Jewish rights.

I recommend this very interesting article.

I found this artice to be very instructive. While it was written a few years ago, it is even more true today, in our fast moving world. Highly recommend Diane's work.

This article reads as though Ibogaine is somewhat of a novelty. It is not. They worked with it down at the Univ of Florida or Univ of Miami for awhile til some legal issues came out. Ibogaine has been around for over 100 years..and there is no doubt that it does IN FACT help those with addictions to heroin, cocaine, alcohol. However, there are risks, that are mostly cardiac. It decreases the cravings of addictions according to those who have used it. Atrial fibrillations and flutters must be watched for, so those with any cardiac problems probably should not take IBO. In Ibogaine clinics you need a sitter, that is, someone with you AT ALL times. I know personally two people who went to clinics and the IBO did eliminate their addiction, but the costs at the clinics were around $5000--one was in Canada and one at St. Kitts. Also, this article is incorrect-- as there are at present about 12 ibogaine clinics including the ones in Europe that are in operation. I don't know what the FDA has against this drug, seeing as they allowed about 60,000 to die before they pulled Enkaid and Tambocor from the market for cardiac problems during the early 89-90s season. Ibogaine is considered a psychodelic drug from their point of view, and the FDA remains hard lined against it. Ibogaine's 12 or 18 hydroxy isomer is the one most effective in the studies so far. Also, the "millions" (see article) spent by the NIDA in the 90s for research on ibogaine was mostly corrupted and mismanaged, so very little of the money went for research. From my studies about 70% of the "recovered" addicts, go back to addiction in some other form sometimes a year or two later. So, support groups are needed. However, we have other drugs that work for addicts now, so we should be trying those as well. In this country, addiction recovery is not exactly a priority item listed on the walls of law enforecement. There is too much search and seizure incentive to have that. guyairey