Perspectives and Opinions Books

A two volume, non-artisan survey drawing upon contributions by experts which include government officials, academic scholars, business professionals, and ordinary citizens from around the world, "Global Perspectives On The United States: A Nation By Nation Survey" is an impressively informed and informative general resource surveying and analyzing the role and image of the United States from the viewpo0ints of the peoples and nations of the world. Featuring 140 articles that have been knowledgeably compiled and collaboratively edited by David Levinson and Karen Christensen, "Global Perspectives On The United States" highlights the complications and contradictions that are basic components of a range of viewpoints the peoples and societies of other countries have towards America in matters and issues that range from economics, to jurisprudence, to cultural norms, to social concerns. A strongly recommended and core addition to academic and community library International Studies reference collections, "Global Perspectives On The United States" is enhanced with the addition of more than 150 sidebars and photographs, statistical tables, biographies, a world map, a timeline of key events, and a list of general resources for further information on perspectives regarding the United States.

I think this book gives a quite sufficient overview about Fethullah Gulen's work who is a great scholar in the mainstream of Islam. Although it is a small size book, some fundamentals of his ideas can be found clearly stated in it. I strongly recommend to who interested in knowing about Mr. Gulen.

A very good introduction to the most recent scholarship on Native American women. I have used this collection in a variety of classes and students have responded positively to the essays. It is stronger in the pre-twentieth century period and the essays are more theorectical than empirical.

This is an excellent book which takes an in depth look at convicted rapists in an attempt to understand why men rape. It's not a perfect study, as the author freely admits, because it only includes men who have actually been convicted and incarcerated for rape. But despite the limitations of the sample, the book does an excellent job of attempting to answer the question "why do men rape?". It is an enlightening and important book, and one which may provide its female readers with an understanding which will allow them to better protect themselves from dangerous situations.

How far has technology come in past years? Where might it go in the future? These are questions that Janna Quitney Anderson considers in "Imagining the Internet". The book is filled with quotations of predictions made before the internet took off. They give good insight and often help to clarify how far the internet has come in ten and even fifteen years.

The book begins with a general history of early internet. Anderson takes the reader from Berners-Lee and his worldwide web all the way through its commercialism and networking expansion. She later looks at the internet as a highway, as it is often considered. This metaphor has grown and been used in various references to the internet, and Anderson uses it effectively to show how we are speeding on this "internet highway". Through reading this book, one can see firsthand just how far and fast we have come to where we are today. And the growth only gets faster from here.

Anderson also considers newer issues that have been brought to light by the development of the internet. She looks at the privacy factor, which has changed drastically in the few years since the internet has been created. Dangers introduced by the internet are also considered, as well as the many inefficiencies and negative aspects of the internet. Here, Anderson offers her own opinions as well as those of many well-respected and insightful, interesting individuals.

Some predictions that Anderson remarks upon can tend to seem far-out, involving the end of mankind as we know it and a completely computerized world. But as she explains through many different opinions and quotations in her book, these ideas might not be entirely inconceivable. Anderson effectively quotes the Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski, as saying that it might be better to simply halt technological advances altogether. The numerous ideas she addresses, like this one, are thought-provoking on many levels.

This book is an excellent read for those interested in technology and the growth of the internet. Janna Quitney Anderson successfully describes the history of the internet and she thoroughly looks into its past, present and future. Anderson also sites many respected sources throughout "Imagining the Internet", notable Bill Gates and Nicholas Negroponte. The quotes may seem excessive to the casual reader. Still, academics will enjoy this book, as will those who are simply interested in gaining a greater knowledge of the topic and considering the future of technology and the internet.

"Imagining the Internet" by Janna Quitney Anderson provides the reader with an eye opening account of how fast the technological world has advanced in the last 200 years. This book is full of expert opinions from before the internet became what it is now and it represents the support and opposition for an internet based world of communication unknown to its developers at the time.
And to the reader's surprise, this book isn't an overload of scientific words and sentences of geniuses that go in one ear and out the other. Anderson does a great job of breaking down the scientific jargon so that the everyday person can grasp the concept that the internet is growing faster than we realize.
Beginning with a background of how we got to the internet, Anderson begins by reminding and informing the reader about the telegraph and Morse code. Showing the reader how far we have come since those means of communication. She then progresses into radio, telephone use and then television, providing lots of facts and statistics about the growing use of all of these gadgets over the years.
This background really helps the reader to understand that we often forget how different and less convenient things were just 50 years ago. Anderson even that it was until 1956 when President Eisenhower really advanced the U.S. interstate and highway system, something we use everyday and often forget that it was just 50 years ago that they were actually established. All of these reminders help the reader grasp the internet a little better when she begins to share the predictions of many of the developers and idea thinkers of the internet.
Using research and predictions that have been gathered as part of the Elon University/Pew Internet and American Life Project database, Anderson shares the thoughts and visions of the founders and creators of the internet. It is amazing to see how correct some of the predictions in this book were when they were made a decade ago. Another interesting part about the large number of quotes and predictions included in the book is that you can see the debate about the internet just by reading through the quotes.
Anderson acknowledges the debates that occurred about internet overload and whether or not to place restrictions on content and she includes that information and the thoughts of the internet creators in the book. All of these debates lead into what technology could be coming to with the further implementation of RFID's, artificial intelligence and more.
Anderson keeps the flow of this book well organized starting with the background of technology working all the way up to the present day and then she leaves us with false predictions which I think was a great way to wrap up the book. Starting with short one sentence predictions, Anderson includes some dead wrong predictions from 100 years ago that are somewhat laughable. She then adds more intense predictions that just didn't come true. Overall this is a great book to fill you in on how far we have come technologically in the last 200 years and can also give you an insight on where we go from here.

"Janna Anderson illuminates with great clarity the history, dreams, and challenges of the Internet, which allow the reader to see glimpses of the future. A wonderful and important contribution," said Tiffany Shlain, founder and chairperson of the Webby Awards.

This quote sums up "Imagining the Internet" as a whole. The book is futuristic. The book is thought provoking. Yet most of all, the book is our gateway from the past to the future through the Internet.

The book focuses on predictions made in the 1990s about how far the Internet will take us on the information highway. The future is put into perspective through many detailed quotes and thoughts coming from all kinds of people and publications, including Wired Magazine. Warning: These facts that are presented may make you change how you view the world and the years to come.

One of the things I like most about the book is the chapter titles. They are written creatively and make me excited to read on and see how the chapter content fits with the catchy titles. Much of the book is fact-based and informational, so the creative titles work to make it pop. One of the most creative titles is "Nobody knows you're a dog," playing off of a famous cartoon that deals with privacy issues. Another thing that makes the book stand out is the research. This book is so thoroughly researched and filled with extensive yet captivating quotes and a broad range of the most important and up-to-date subjects. "Imagining," the first word in the title, is true to its meaning for this book.

Let's start from the very beginning. After laying out the importance of how networks influence our lives, the book immediately dives into the history of communications. At once we are seeing the networking system at work to realize how far we've come. Brief, sectioned paragraphs inform us of our past so that we are better able to understand the future that's in front of us.

As we speed through the highway that the book lays out for us, we come across many important and relevant issues. These issues include the development of the Internet and how it began to shape lives, views of the communication and information highway, past and current skepticism of new technology, pop culture and the Internet, predictions on the death of existing tools and social structures, historic perspectives put into the views of today, top voices and their predictions, privacy and freedom issues, the future of intelligent machines and past predictions that did not come true with the present explanations for them.

As you can see, the book is quality packed with the predictions serving as the backbone. Intricately woven quotes guide us through the chapter introductions to open up our eyes to technology, the Internet and our future. This book is a good read for anyone who plans on sticking with the Internet as it begins to take a more dominant role in our lives. "Imagining the Internet's" personalities, predictions and perspectives will shape your vision. Read, and let it.

Janna Quitney Anderson's new book, "Imagining the Internet: Personalities, Predictions, Perspectives," won't be the most interesting reading for the typical Internet user, but anyone who has a vested interest in the future of technology will find that it is a worthwhile resource. Anderson has collected some of the most interesting and insightful quotations from expert technologists, scientists and futurists. The book is serious reading that brings together insights from the experts about the Internet's past and puts them in context of other communications development.

The book's focus is the Internet, but Anderson discusses all types of communications networks that bring relevance to the topic. The Internet is still in its infancy. Comparing it to older communications technologies gives context to its growth. The book gives a great frame of reference for the adoption and integration of revolutionary communications technology like the telegraph or telephone. It's easy to see connections between predictions about Morse Code and early predictions about the Internet. We see the potential the Internet had during its early years, and also see that there's almost unlimited room for change - it can adapt as our needs and abilities grow.

As Anderson leads us through the development of the Internet - from the early ARPANET to the web we know today - she provides numerous predictive quotes from Internet luminaries and stakeholders from the early 90s. She shows us that the experts had the foresight to see both the enormous good that the Internet had the potential to bring as well as the chance for ethical quandaries. The experts saw opportunity for great social interaction and a development of an information economy even before the Internet penetrated mainstream culture. At the same time, the predictions Anderson selected, also show the controversy the Internet can stir-up, including issues of piracy, privacy and security.

Now, not all of the predictions made in the early years of the Internet have come true, but those are included too. The point, it seems, is to chronicle the hype about the Internet as it was being developed, perhaps in the hope of finding trends that might produce some insight into where the Internet could develop from where it is now. Computers haven't replaced TVs yet, as many experts predicted more than a decade ago, but there are signs that it could in the not-too-distant-future. Other similar predictions might still give readers clues as to what's to come in the future of the web.

Imagining the internet is a thoughtful book about the internet that goes into detail describing communication resources in the past, present and future. Jana Anderson, the author, starts out describing the past forms of communication and the way they have evolved. From the telegraph, to the printing press, to the internet, all of these inventions have brought us a little closer; making the world a little smaller. Some of the communication devices that were created people did not believe would evolve as much as they have. However, in Anderson's book she explains how they grow, change people's lives, and change the world. The inventions slowly, but surely, begin to take part in politics and integrate themselves into our day to day lives.

The book is also an accessory to the internet website Elon University/Pew Internet and American Life project. The website serves as a time capsule for future generations so people can make predictions for the future of the internet. The internet according to Anderson's book could take over in ways that seem far stretched from our imagination. Within the book are predictions that people have made over the last few years. Some possibilities that the book mentions for the future are things like shopping online as a normal thing, or becoming more dependent on home schooling through the internet. Many department stores already have online stores, which might be the downfall of malls and stores you can walk into and shop. Already, there is some truth to the predictions that this book mentions.
Some changes that have already formed because of the internet are mentioned in this book. For example, the way books are no longer dependant on the old fashioned printing press because they can now be printed online for people to read. Having them on the internet also has another benefit that affects business; dealing with the money they save from having to actually pay to print. In this book, she illustrates, many times, the comparisons between the telegraph, television and telegram. All of these relate back to the internet because they progressed, just as the internet will continue to do.

Overall, Anderson's book takes the reader on a journey through the past, present, and future of communication with the internet. The internet has amazing potential ahead of it, and the book suggests many of the possibilities from credible people. The predictions that are included in the book are very possible for the future and are thought provoking for the reader. Various predictions are already on their way to becoming a reality, while others might still seem far stretched to a reader. The idea of robots might seem far away, but in reality, after reading the book, it is not that far away.

It is interesting, as a brazilian, to realize Said's resentment resembles one of a similar kind which portraits Latin America as the victim of American Imperialism. Latin american intellectuals share the same hate, anger and paranoia towards US.
This may be why to this day brazilian academics force this appaling book down their students throats.
You dont need to be a clinical psychologist to figure this one out: a scape goat is a helpful tool to cope with one's own stupid decisions in life.

This book is a great overview and as noted by many others, a true work of literary genius. Colonial subjects, such as Said himself, have a hard time placing themselves in the mess of Colonialism and the supposed Post-Colonial era we live in and this book aids in that coming to terms process. Said manages to marry the subjectivity of his reality with the brilliant grasp of academia. A Must read by all, to gain a better idea of the world and times we live in.

The book came on time (before college started) and it was in lovely condition :)

Dr. Said missed the track completely with this supposed historical analysis that is neither historical nor good analysis. While I won't write pages of critique, here are just a few examples of poor work to make points not supported by fact (nor faith).

1. The British and French controlled the eastern Mediterranean at the end of the 17th century. False - the Ottomans controlled that area; French and British merchants needed permission to trade. None of the lands of the Eastern Med. were ever colonies. At most they were protectorates in which the real rulers were the local people. (Even true up to the pre-WW II phase.) This is common history for anyone who tried to look at such.

2. Muslim armies conquered Turkey before over-running northern Africa. False - The Arab armies did not "take" Turkey; they went straight to North Africa. The so cited areas remained Christian (Eastern Orthodox) until overrun by the Seljuck Turks in the 11 th century. Same comment as last sentence in #1, above.

3. Westerners get our history wrong. Only we muslims can interpret our religion correctly (paraphrase). I'm sorry, but there is a long history of intellectuals of all religions studying each other. Just because many do not accept that the Koran is god-given (faith) as opposed to man written (fact) does not make non-moslems wrong (some muslims believe it is a man-written document).

What other religion on this earth makes such a claim of perfectness and superiority untouchable by anyone? Why, muslims themselves argue about what the Koran means (unless he is Wahabbi - then of course there is no argument). Fanaticism and fact twisting in the name of religion is a vice.....

Drawing upon the work of Michel Foucault, Edward Said claims that Western ideas of the `Orient' are not based upon objective facts but are created through academic and cultural `discourses' which serve to promote Western imperialism - often despite `liberal' intentions.

This mythical `East' is the antithesis of the West, a negative or inversion of the 'Occident' which is used to define *both* in binary opposition to each other, and to facilitate the political and domination of the East.

However in order to demonstrate the existence of this `Orientalism' Said falls back on an equally stereotypical and monolithic `West' which he constructs entirely from the carefully selected writings of a handful of 19th Century middle-class, white, male English and French authors.

This tactic not only ignores or misrepresents a large body of Western authors sympathetic to the East and sensitive to differences within it, but also glosses over Western heterogenities of class, race, sex, religion and generation in order to manufacture a homogenous `Occident' devoid of differences.

Said is as guilty of *Occidentalism* as those he criticises are of *Orientalism*.

Said fails to provide any evidence that the `West' defines itself in binary opposition to a mythical `East' that Western scholars have created for just this purpose; he simply *manufactures* the kind of `West' necessary to explain the myths about the `East' that he himself has constructed from a very limited number of Western sources.

He has created his own mythical `East' *and* `West' from a small number of literary texts which he then projects onto others and thinks he has *discovered* rather than *invented*.

For those interested in the aesthetic issues inherent in the fall of socialism, this is a great primer. As it is a collection of articles, it manages to offer a number of theories about the future of architecture in Eastern Europe without going into too much depth in any direction. That is the book's strength and weakness.

I read this book several years ago as a grad student and now regularly recommend it to my doc students. The articles offer eye-opening studies on how bodies were and are read as sites of deviancy and used as the objects and justification for intervention through both acts against individuals and local and global politics. It offers really practical studies in how can power-knowledge function in "scientific" studies, particularly in colonialism, although there are more recent studies as well. As I am particularly interested in gender studies, I especially like Fausto-Sterlings article on the so-called "Hottentot Venus", Horn's piece on reading the female body, and Terry's piece on the search for the homosexual body. I also frequently cite Phelan's piece on differences in the imagined audiences of AIDS education material. Having cited these as my favorites, there isn't a piece in the book that I didn't like.

I'm usually not a big fan of postmodern scholarship, and this book is no exception. It was a decent book for my class, in that it introduced students to the implications of various kinds of bodily deviance (deafness, race, sex, body type, etc.) as well as various (arguably) non-anatomical categories that were reified as anatomical difference (Jewishness, various mental illnesses, etc.). Most of the articles are not all that great, however.

Proctor's essay on the Holocaust is excellent, and is probably the high-point of the book. But you can get that elsewhere. The more postmodern essays are interesting but their conclusions shouldn't be taken very seriously, since they are just asserted; sometimes, their conclusions are directly contradicted by the evidence cited in the text! A lot of this book is ideological rather than investigatory, and when Fausto-Sterling asserts a link between anatomy and capitalism or tells me (despite evidence to the contrary) that specific anatomists did their work to support a global colonialist project, I shook my head in disgust and ripped into the essay the next day in class.

There's better stuff out there.

Patricia Hilden began her career as a History PhD from the illustrious Cambridge University, describing her own experience in graduate school as "lonely and often incomprehensible." Whatever struggles she may have encountered in those early days, she would go on to write passionately about feminist labor history (the lack of a racial referent means, of course, white feminist labor history) and her 1986 book "Working Women and Socialist Politics in France, 1880-1914: A Regional Study" was met with glowing reviews, as was her 1994 book "Women, Work, and Politics: Belgium, 1830-1914". Hilden would write extensively on European women's labor struggles and history from her time at Cambridge up until arriving at the Native American Studies department at UC Berkeley in the mid 1990's.

Before this period of success, while still a graduate student, Hilden was in a formidable public battle with a leading white feminist historian, Joan Scott, over an article Scott co-authored with Louise Tilly in 1975. As broadening as Hilden's critique may have been, it too had its limits, for she never once critiqued the absence of race in Scott and Tilly's analysis. Nor did she discuss race in her critique of Brian Harrison and James McMillan's work. In fact, race as an analytic category does not arrive in Hilden's own work until 1995.

In 1995 Hilden published an autobiography, "When Nickels Were Indians," that met with mixed reviews. In 1999 Alan Velie writes that the book is largely unconvincing on important themes and at times even annoying (yet astute in other areas and worth reading):

...identity is for most Indians involved with the life of a particular tribe. Although Hilden was raised knowing the history of the Nez Perce, she never gets around to visiting them or taking part in any of their ceremonies. The result is a sort of pallid pan-Indianness which she fails to make convincing to the reader, and perhaps to herself... neither [William] Penn nor [Patricia] Hilden is very convincing about what they consider Indian culture to be.

In 1998 Devon Mihesuah writes:

...in the 1970s [Hilden] did not claim to be Nez Perce when applying for an Office of Economic Opportunity position because she looks phenotypically white and was fearful that people might mistake her for a wannabe. Her repeated references to the "shovel nature" of her teeth (a feature that she claims was "that era's" [1950-1960s?] 'scientific' signifiers of "Native blood") and to her cheekbones (are we to assume they are high?) illustrate her apparent need to convince readers that she does have a tribal connection. Okazawa-Rey argues that when light-skinned Black women degrade darker-skinned Black women their "identification with the racist oppressors is complete." And this may be true for Indians in some cases...

Gerald Vizenor in 1998:

The remarkable measures of varionative identities by rumor and allusive documents, and the rich mixture of native names, are the absence, not a presence of natives in "All My Sins Are Relatives" and "When Nickels Were Indians." The metaphors, and the curious ambiguities of "some records" are incommensurable as sources of native identities. These are not native sessions or situations; rather, the cursive subordination of an Indian presence to the abetment of names in government documents.

These questions raised by "When Nickels" regarding Hilden's Indian ancestry does not necessarily mean she should not write about Native American issues or that she can't contribute to "red feminist" thought. Rather, what would have been interesting to read in "From a Red Zone" is Hilden's intellectual skill applied to a systematic, non-sarcastic excavation of the very dynamics that make "rumors and allusive documents" the very stuff of some Northern Indians' identities. How can ambiguously Indian people still be a part of a revolutionary movement? Rather than insisting one is unquestionably Indian and pointing an accusatory finger at someone else, explaining the social and psychic machinery at work in this common situation would be immensely more helpful. (Ward Churchill, for example, is in a similar spot.) Auto-analysis in these thorny situations always make the strongest kind of scholarship.

Hilden's decision to not address in "From a Red Zone" the contentious issues raised in "When Nickels," specifically her self-expressed discomfort around full-bloods, tenuous tribal affiliation, her late appropriation of a public Indian identity, and her relationship to these issues as a middle class, fully-tenured, phenotypically white woman, (as she describes herself) does not advance rigorous Native American Studies scholarship out of the impasse it is caught in on these issues.

Hilden's `discourse of condescension' in "From a Red Zone" (a reviewer of "When Nickels" also criticizes) goes back a long way, and as a rhetorical strategy has likely been successful in the illusion of obliterating her opponent. Condescension may be a good weapon when arguing against haughty, powerful, white men, yet its efficacy is questionable when used to flog poor people of color; rather it becomes a familiar form of elitist abuse as evident in Chapter 5, "How the Border Lies."

There is a serious problem with applying white Marxist analyses to communities of color, a point systematically argued by a number of black and Native American scholars. The chapter "Race for Sale" employs a problematic understanding of race, and in the context of African cultural exhibits, winds up collapsing black and white consumers as `the same.' This chapter doesn't go far enough to engage the important interventions made by Black Studies scholars on race as it exceeds economic explanations.

Hilden's deep engagement with historical materialism and long history of writing about European class/gender issues would make a sustained comparative analysis of the racialized (largely) lumpen location of American Indians in the U.S., an interesting and perhaps more fruitful project.

Hilden has already declared in "When Nickels Were Indians" that she does not mind attacking and bullying people she disagrees with, but constructive criticism is different from scathing indictments and would go a long way towards building a social movement.