Utah Books

I really enjoyed this book. I gave it five stars because it would be apealing to even the casual reader. Each of it's chapters are written by emminent Mormon (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) scholars. Each chapter was originally a presentation at a symposium given at BYU. Any one interested in the Mormon faith can get an insight into its pioneering history and anyone interested in history can meet the Mormon legacy. It has been a useful and valuable addition to my personal library. One of the contributing authors, Richard Oman is a curator at the Museum of Church History and Art in Salt Lake City, where I am a docent. His chapter titled "The Homemade Kingdom; Mormom Regional Furniture" revisits very closely the exhibit of the same name installed in the museum a couple of years ago and is thoroughly enjoyable. All of these contributors are accomplished writers in addition to their scholarly pusuits so the book is an enjoyable read. Each chapter is self contained and lends itself to interupted reading.

I really enjoyed this book. I gave it five stars because it would be apealing to even the casual reader. Each of it's chapters are written by emminent Mormon (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) scholars. Each chapter was originally a presentation at a symposium given at BYU. Any one interested in the Mormon faith can get an insight into its pioneering history and anyone interested in history can meet the Mormon legacy. One of the contributing authors, Richard Oman is a curator at the Museum of Church History and Art in Salt Lake City, where I am a docent. His chapter titled "The Homemade Kingdom; Mormom Regional Furniture" revisits very closely the exhibit of the same name installed in the museum a couple of years ago and is thoroughly enjoyable. All of these contributors are accomplished writers in addition to their scholarly pusuits so the book is an enjoyable read. Each chapter is self contained and lends itself to interupted reading. It has been a useful and valuable addition to my personal library.

The Big What Are Friends For? Storybook is a compendium of heartwarming tales about friendship between animal pals as well as the ups and downs of their everyday life. Packed with a treasury of thoroughly enjoyable short stories by Sally Grindley, and soft color illustrations by Penny Dann that blend with and enhance the entertaining text, The Big What Are Friends For? Storybook makes for excellent bedtime reading.

My children and I love this story! It is refreshing to find a tale of friendship that touches on sharing and helping, but also on differing opinions and hurt feelings. The story weaves nicely through all of these aspects of friendship and still manages to end happily. The illustrations convey all of the emotions of the two sweet characters most effectively. This delightful story easily led to conversation with my preschoolers on the value of true friends.

As a member of the Zuni Pueblo, I validate the position and tone set forth for the Zuni people in the text. In addition, this book exemplifies the issues the Zuni Pueblo faces today (2005) on paper rather than by death. This is an excellent book that gives a true representation of the history of Zuni Pueblo and the people. This is truely for the benefit of Zuni Pueblo.

An excellent, excellent book! This is an extremely well-written and very interesting book about a great man who played a very important role in the history of the Zuni tribe. This is a wonderful addition to the subject of Southwest U.S. history.

Drawn from the pages of The Amicus Journal (a quarterly publication of the Natural Resources Defense Council), the poets and poetry selected by Brian Swan for Poetry Comes Up Where It Can reflect the common them of struggling with issues of nature and the environment during the final decade of the millennium. Windfall: Eating an apple, I think of Emerson/in another railroad berth/traveling to another Chautauqua. This time,//maybe it's summer, he's passing/apple orchards in Ohio where/he half dreams a bumblebee//sipping nectar--in it belly, a mite/glows with mite joy. In the mite's belly,/other living things the size of atoms//climb mountains...but he's tired/of revelation. It's certain the cosmos/is an orchard, or tree, or single bee//bearing the whole apple future, & Boston,/from one field to another,/& bearing him. He'll lecture this audience//to find & live the secret of any windfall,/to try, for god's sake, to love//that which is obvious, & themselves.

Drawn from the pages of The Amicus Journal (a quarterly publication of the Natural Resources Defense Council), the poets and poetry selected by Brian Swan for Poetry Comes Up Where It Can reflect the common them of struggling with issues of nature and the environment during the final decade of the millennium. Windfall: Eating an apple, I think of Emerson/in another railroad berth/traveling to another Chautauqua. This time,//maybe it's summer, he's passing/apple orchards in Ohio where/he half dreams a bumblebee//sipping nectar--in it belly, a mite/glows with mite joy. In the mite's belly,/other living things the size of atoms//climb mountains...but he's tired/of revelation. It's certain the cosmos/is an orchard, or tree, or single bee//bearing the whole apple future, & Boston,/from one field to another,/& bearing him. He'll lecture this audience//to find & live the secret of any windfall,/to try, for god's sake, to love//that which is obvious, & themselves.

Recasting Persian Poetry maps the zone of transition between two relatively stable states of Persian literature, defined by the traditional and the modern systems of poetic signification. It is a diachronic study of poetic change which focuses on the hows and whereofs of literary reform over a period of one-hundred years: from the first signs of dissatisfaction with the classical canon in the mid- 19th c., to the 1960s, when modern poetry became influential enough to prescribe the literary standard. Karimi-Hakkak's book belongs to a very small body of works which pertain to this crucial time. Its greatest distinction is the consistent application of modern methodology (based on the works of Mikhail Bakhtin and Yuri Lotman in particular) to poetry of a period either ignored by modernist critics, or used as a foil for she'r-e now, modern poetry proper.

Chapter 1 traces the pedigree of the modernist movement to the essayistic prose of the 19th c. intellectuals Akhundzade, Aqa-Khan Kermani, and Malkom-Khan, who were among the first to call for socially relevant literature, for European-style criticism, and for the preposderance of substance over poetic artifice--perrenial issues of the modernist discourse. The author examines their aspirations to an idealized and as yet rather vague "progressive European standard," and their subversion of the classical ideal through stereotyping and negating the literary practices of the Return movement.

Chapter 2 examines two landmark sub-genres of the Constitutional period: the "democratic qasida" (Dehkhoda's "Yad ar...," 1909) and the "political ghazal" ('Aref Qazvini's "Payam-e azadi," 1911). Conventional criticism singles thematic innovation as their only distinctive feature. Karimi-Hakkak introduces an essential corrective to this view. Starting from the theoretical assumption that a change of one element in a system inevitably alters the relationships within it, he demonstrates that the introduction of socially relevant themes into the classical genres lends additional, politically charged meanings to traditional images. This innovation also facilitates the inclusion of "non-poetic" images into the standard poetic language, images drawn directly from the periodical press and the social discourse of the time.

Chapter 3, an analysis of the Bahar/Raf'at debate, conveys the tenor of literary exchanges between modernists and traditionists on the threshold of the 1920s (the decade which brought forth Nima Yushij's poem Afsane and she'r-e now). In another departure from the conventional treatment of the subject Karimi-Hakkak considers not only the differences, but also the shared ground of the two aesthetic positions. Both trends are seen as essentially reformist, drawing on a medley of European notions about poetry and its role in society.

Chapter 4 looks at extra-systemic influences and their integration into the receiving culture. Bahar's "Ranj o ganj" (1919), Iraj's "Qalb-e madar" (1923), and Parvin's "Jula-ye Khoda" demonstrate how three distinct translation-based literary activities --poetic improvisation, adaptation, and appropriation--bring foreign themes into the native literature, and, by taking off the alien edge, anchor them in the existing system of signification. Karimi-Hakkak highlights two aspects of indigenisation: 1) how foreign components alter and expand the receiving system; 2) how borrowed material is transformed and adapted to local priorities and cultural traits.

Chapter 5 views the stage at which fundamental conventions of the classical Persian tradition are directly challenged. Through Lahuti's parodic qasida "Be dokhtaran-e Iran," Raf'at's sonnet "Nowruz va dehqan," and 'Eshqi's stanzaic triptych "Se tablow-ye Mariam," Karimi-Hakkak outlines three major directions, in which the quest for new poetic expression went just prior to Nima: thematic innovation within the formal classical structure; outright replacement of Persian genre forms with Western ones (in this case, the ghazal with the sonnet); the abandonment of the traditional emblematic imagery for European-style mimetic description.

Chapter 6, on the emergence of a new poetic tradition, has two focal points: Nima Yushij's vision of she'r-e now; and the establishment of an alternative interpretative community of critics and readers, who assess literary works according to modernist poetic criteria. Contrary to popular perception, Nima's work is seen not as the beginning, but as the culmination of the movement for literary reform. Karimi-Hakkak follows the interplay of tradition and innovation in Nima's poetry, then examines the critical trend which set the tone for a politicized reading of Nima's works and promoted his vision of she'r-e now as the only alternative to the Classical system.

Recasting Persian Poetry presents a balanced analysis of a contentious issue --poetic modernity and its relation to tradition. It follows the painful process of selection, rejection, transformation and modification, through which a literature draws on the available resources to renew itself. Taking as a starting point two central genre forms of the Persian classical canon--the qasida and the ghazal--the author isolates the alterations that gradually break down the traditional system: from the introduction of new themes and imagery, to the final coup-- the rejection of traditional metre- and rhyme-patterns. The study proves convincingly the cumulative nature of change, achieved through the creative quests of several generations. This approach inevitably highlights also the factor of continuity in Persian poetry and its remarkable powers of re-invention.

Along the way the author recreates vividly the intellectual atmosphere of the times and revisits the rhetorical salvos which gave colour and texture to the literary discourse. He analyses key critical works on literary reform, and discusses the links of the sample texts to their context: the circumstances that occasioned them; the journals where they first appeared; the interpretative material which framed them (captions, prologues, subtitles); the critical response which they generated. Such information, which conveys the impact of a text on its immediate environment, almost never appears in surveys and anthologies.

Karimi-Hakkak's monograph approaches Persian poetry as a phenomenon of world literature, and refracts it through the prism of a modern school of literary theory. The universalist perspective of this well-argued, insightful book offers a meeting ground to Persianists and comparativists, specialists in Middle Eastern and in Western literatures, in social and cultural studies. Its impact is bound to be felt well beyond its specific subject of investigation.

In this well-written and persuasively argued book, Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak chronicles the development of Persian poetry in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Theoretically, Karimi-Hakkak draws on Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogical principle and Yuri Lotman's diachronic principle to show the process of change in Persian poetry. The beginning of this change is exemplified in an incident in the mid-nineteenth century at the court of Nasereddin Shah, where the reform-minded prime minister, Amir Kabir, chastises the poet Habibollah Qa'ani for "lying" in a panegyric qasida in honor of the prime minister. Amir Kabir, of course, saw poetry in general and the type of poetry that had developed during the Qajar period as detrimental to "progress" and "modernization" in the Iranian society, which was in dire need of change. Such extraliterary concerns, Karimi-Hakkak explains, were expressed increasingly by others, such as Fath-'Ali Akhundzadeh, Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani, and Mirza Malkom Khan, who also addressed a need for a change in Persian poetry in literary terms as well, always, however, linking it to social concerns.

Given the social and political climate of Iran in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which led to the Constitutional Revolution of 1906-1911, the idea of the necessity of a change in Persian poetry in a way that would reflect the realities of a country in transition was gradually becoming widespread and propagated by such notable literary figures as 'Ali Akbar Dehkhoda and Abolqasem 'Aref, who challenged the traditional system of Persian poetry in terms of introducing new content as well as experimentation with rhetorical, lexicosemantic, and structural aspects of poetry. While Dehkhoda, for instance, uses a lesser-known traditional form, the mosammat, to elegize the execution of a revolutionary journalist, 'Aref employs the ghazal, "the most central genre within the lyrical tradition" (p. 88), to write his "Payam-e Azadi" [Message of Freedom].

Karimi-Hakkak pursues his chronicle of poetic change in Iran into the next stage with the poets Mohammad Taqi Bahar and Taqi Raf'at and their debate on the nature of poetic modernity. While both of these poets and the like-minded members of their respective circles were by this time convinced of the necessity of a "literary revolution," Bahar still believed in the preservation of traditional forms and devices, while Raf'at advocated "radical literary modernism" and espoused a "vision" which he believed would "alter the bases of poetic practice." Both camps, however, the author argues, begin to describe the cultural and literary heritage of the past in terms of an "Iranian" identity.

Moreover, Karimi-Hakkak argues, the notion of "sociopolitical ramifications of esthetic changes" led to the idea of poets "as social leaders trying the limits and possibilities of social change.

An important argument in the development of modern Persian literature (and, of course, other aspects of the Iranian society as a whole) has centered around the question of modernization and Westernization and whether or not, in practice, these terms are, in fact, synonymous as used to describe the evolution of Iranian society, and in this case, Persian literature in the course of the past one or two centuries. It can be argued that almost all advocates of modernism in Persian literature, from Akhundzadeh, Kermani, and Malkom Khan to Dehkhoda, 'Aref, Bahar, and Raf'at, among others, to varying degrees, were inspired by developments and changes that had occurred in Western, particularly European, literatures. Still, such inspirations would not mean blindly copying Western models, but in practice, adaptation of aspects of Western literature which were then altered and tailored to fit the needs of the Iranian culture. In a chapter entitled "From Translation to Appropriation," Karimi-Hakkak describes the process of literary borrowing from the West through several specific examples from well-known Iranian poets, such as Bahar's poem, "Ranj-o Ganj" [Toil and Treasure], based on La Fontaine's "Le Laoureur et ses Enfants," Iraj Mirza's "Qalb-e Madar" [A Mother's Heart], based on a German vignette and Jean Richepin's "La Chanson de la Glu...," and Parvin E'tesami's "Jula-ye Khoda" [God's Weaver], based on an essay by Arthur Brisbane. Karimi-Hakkak explicates the nature and the complex process of such borrowings and adaptations.

Another significant step in the process of change in Persian poetry is seen in the works of poets such as Abolqasem Lahuti, Raf'at, and Mohammad Reza Mirzadeh 'Eshqi. Lahuti, for instance, the author argues, with a "desire to incorporate women into the social fabric," challenges the conventions of traditional poetry in terms of the imagery of the beloved. Raf'at, on the other hand, inspired by Western poetry, emphasizes the relationship between the form (or, as Karimi-Hakkak prefers to call it, genre) and thematic content of poems.

Karimi-Hakkak concludes his book with a discussion of Nima Yushij and how Nima and others in the 1940s combined the principles introduced by earlier literary figures for a new system of poetic expression. Nima's unique contribution to the process of the emergence of modernity in Persian poetry, the author contends, should be considered in terms of his attempts to overcome the duality of poetry and society, the former having been seen and defined in terms of the latter.

Recasting Persian Poetry should be considered a significant contribution to our understanding of the process of change in modern Persian poetry. In addition to reiterating the fact that the call for a change in the form, content, and conceptualization of poetry was not a one-man crusade, or that the "revolution" (a term the author generally seems reluctant to use) in Persian literature did not occur instantaneously but, like political revolutions, took place over a period of time, Karimi-Hakkak describes and analyzes the process of change or what we may call "the anatomy of the literary revolution" in Persian poetry. Scholars and students of Persian and world poetry will find his analysis of the selected poems particularly enjoyable. Karimi-Hakkak's study of modern Persian poetry in the context of recent critical theories will, hopefully, open the way to other studies of this kind in all genres of contemporary Persian literature

Gary and his brother have paddled every river and creek that is described in this book. If you plan on running any Utah river and creek, this is the guide to use for specific beta, when the best running time frames are (cfm wise), all permit requirements, put-ins and take-outs and all geography characteristics that may preclude a good time. Get it and take it with you! Awesome detailed route maps that can't be beat.

Gary and his brother have paddled every river and creek that is described in this book. If you plan on running any Utah river and creek, this is the guide to use for specific beta, when the best running time frames are (cfm wise), all permit requirements, put-ins and take-outs and all geography characteristics that may preclude a good time. Get it and take it with you! Awesome detailed route maps that can't be beat.

This is an awesome book for anyone looking for realistic historical fiction. The realationship between Native American and White back then is described extremely well in this book. The author gives accurate information on the customs of indians, and gives a great story to fit each one. I highly reccomend this book.

This is an awesome book for anyone looking for realistic historical fiction. The realationship between Native American and white settlers back then is described extremely well in this book. The author gives accurate information on the customs of indians, and gives a great story to fit each one. I highly reccomend this book.

Compelling, page-turning. Was drawn into the lives of criminals and their victims, story after story, holding my breath until the outcome was revealed. Who needs fiction!

A gourmet sampling of raw crime cooked well. Rogers and Macfarlane serve up a winner!

Wow what a great read. Very thoughtful and exciting.
A fast read you will not put this one down.
Try Adam Joseph's other books.

If you`ve got to get a present for someone`s birthday, Christmas, whatever, they will really enjoy this book. ...this book delivers on every level. Even someone who has never been interested in the Games will find this book completely awinspiring. Definitely the number one piece of memorabilia for our go at the Winter Olympics.

I originally learned of this book while searching an online catalog for genealogy resources. I picked it off the shelf of the library where I was researching and instead of just copying the pages with information about my ancestor, I stopped to look at the whole book. I sat on a hard wooden chair for about a half an hour, reading about the story of the quilt, and reading about the lives of the women who made it. I finally decided to buy a copy. It's a beautiful book, a beautiful quilt, and a joy to read.

Quilts are a lot like people. They are not overnight undertakings. They seldom turn out the way they were intended. Colors change when you run short of fabric. Edges misalign where you least expect it.

When Carol Nielson and her husband inherited an album quilt-half a quilt, to be precise-she had no idea of the journey on which the fragile folds of appliqués and painstaking stitches would call her. Created in 1857 by the women of the Salt Lake City LDS 14th Ward, the quilt was raffled off to raise money for the poor, the Perpetual Immigrating Fund, and for various Mormon charitable enterprises. Each block was designed and signed by one of the women, many of whom were wives of leading church authorities.

Nielson's desire to find the quilt's other half, and to find out more about the women whose legacy she had-both literally and figuratively-inherited, led her back in time through countless lives of hardship, joy, and spiritual conviction in the face of adversity.

Filled with detailed photographs of the quilt and images of those who stitched the blocks, this book is a stirring read, a rich and beautiful testimony to women whose hands shaped not only thread and cloth, but also a state, forging a community with their pioneer spirit.

"Carol Nielson has not only brought together two halves of a quilt, she has restored a forgotten community of women. Her patient research has transformed a family relic into a communal treasure."
-Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, author of A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812

"A vital contribution to Utah's rich history adding to an unfortunately under-appreciated and under-documented part of our history-frontier women."
-William Slaughter, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Historical Department

"A compelling and thorough study of a quilt, the pioneer women who stitched it, and ultimately, the Mormon experience that defined them."
-Kae Covington, author of Gathered in Time: Utah Quilts and Their Makers, Settlement to 1950


Carol Holindrake Nielson has a BA in English education from Utah State University. She has been a teacher, tutor, and an historical interpreter at Mount Vernon, Virginia. She lives in Layton, Utah.

78 color photographs, 45 halftones