Bullock Books

Enjoyed CRIMES OF THE HEART, a play that won the 1981 Pulitzer
Prize for drama.

It was very well performed by L.A. Theatre Works, a company that
has done several other plays that I've enjoyed over the years.

This one is about three rather eccentric sisters from a small
Southern town . . . scandal erupts when Babe, the youngest,
shoots her husband . . . how it all ends is what keeps you
interested in what's happening.

Glenn Heady and Sondra Locke are particularly fine in
two of the main roles . . . and that's why I usually like these
productions so much; i.e., unlike typical books on tape (or CD)
that feature one or two actors, every L.A. Theatre Works has
several different actors for all the key parts.

I loved this play from the day I first saw it in the Manhattan Theatre Club before its inevitable switch to Broadway. And I am to direct it early this year. I found the film interesting - I just watched it last night - but Keaton ()who I have always found wonderful) is sadly miscast. Further there was too much casting the minds back in a sentimental fashion - a big mistake. In fact,the flashbacks did the play no great service at all, and to accompany those scenes with a treacly musical score didn't enhance things at alll. Back to the script. I would have liked some photographed scenes of the Broadway production.The page after page after page of props - many of which were to be in cupboards and drawers that never open - had a mystifying, let's give the actors the right kind of 'feel' effect on me. Actors on Broadway should be better equipped technically than having the need for such specious pieces of 'atmosphere'. As it stands, the script, despite all the useful information at the back, is hardly an actor's handbook, and most would, surreptitiously, turn off copies on larger paper in order that the play can be read more easily, with the left hand pages left blank for the actor to insert his or her notes.

I was lucky enough to work with Henley herself on a production of this show while I was in college, which offered a wonderful opportunity to gain some insight into Crimes of the Heart. Being a native Mississippian with two sisters myself, I was struck by how true-to-life this play is. The script captures that elusive "sense of place" that all the critics talk about when discussing the South - crazy relatives, old friends with haunted pasts, the importance of food and other types of sustenance. The plot revolves around wacky personalities, old wounds, and unplanned events, and even though the characters frequently despair, the show ends on a hopeful note.

As with most plays, it's better to watch Crimes of the Heart than to read it, but I admit that I laughed out loud when I read some of the scenes. Henley won a Pulitzer for her work in Crimes of the Heart, and I think it was well-deserved.

CRIMES OF THE HEART tells the story of three sisters reuniting together after the youngest of the trio (Babe) shoots her husband and is on the verge of being sent to prison. The story takes place deep in the south in Hazlehurst, Mississippi.

The writing in this play is superb. It captures the spirit of each of the young women splendidly. However, moving as the story is, it isn't quite poetical and thereby misses perfection.

Nevertheless, CRIMES OF THE HEART is an enjoyable piece of theatre displaying the daffy complexity of women seen through the lives of three sisters.

I just finished playing Lenny in a college production of this play. It was the most fun I've ever had in any role! I have two sisters myself, and Henley's depiction of that kind of relationship is incredibly real. There are some great scenes and monologues for acting practice, too--one, two, or three women, and a couple for one man and one woman. I recommend it to anyone.

I think this book is very boring and I've got a little bit tired with the plot and the characters. I found this book extremely difficult to continue reading. Also the book is full of inconsistencies. But I think there are many good ideas and themes in this book, but they none developed. I don't recommend this book at all. Not only a story unsatisfying, but the writing style is extremely annoying as well.

Gantenbein tells the story of a man who sees his love and marriage falling apart. In his attempt to look for a rescue, he envisions different scenarios (which may, to the superficial reader, appear to be inconsistencies) that would help him to find a way around the unavoidable. The different scenarios are both, very funny and also insightful. This is an outstanding novel.

Gantenbein is a fantastic book. The inconsistency of the plot the other reviewer mentioned is intended and part of a certain ideology. Most of us are Gantenbeins, not being able to identify with who we are in reality and dreaming of another existence. I was disappointed when I found out that this fabulous book is not in print anymore, it would have been such a good present

sk

Boring, funny or difficult to read are definetely neither accurate, nor scientifically adequate adjectives one should use to describe and classify a novel (not a book, but a novel). Frisch's Gantenbein is not to be evaluated emotionally, but rationnally. It should therefore not be grasped as a love story, or one about (so-called) human feelings, but as a text mainly dealing with the problem of identity, about a decentered I. Frisch manages to create not only an excellent experimentalist piece of art, but aswell a representation of the internal tension of personality, including extremely insightful auto-reflexive passages on Art and Literature. Definetely one of the finest writers of German language of all times.

"A man has been through an experience, now he is looking for the story of his experience"

That is the starting point of this breathtaking pseudo novel. And here I am not trying to debase the book by using the word pseudo: it is just that I have the sensation that Frisch has been writing down notes aimed at something else that is supposed to be a novel. He's got the man; he's got the experiences; now he must build the story. And with this purpose, he explores every feasible event that may occur to the character.

He proposes for example: "Let's say my name is Gantenbein." and goes on, "Let's pretend I am blind". And he deals with all the possible consequences that may be derived from his assumption. What does it entail to fake blindness in the realm of everyday life, love, and friendship? Is there any room for jealousy when blindness prevents us from seeing the evidence? Now let's call the man Enderlin, let's suppose he's about to die, and let's give him a lover. And let's his lover be Gantenbein's wife. Furthermore, let's Gantenbein even be Enderlin; assume his wife is an actress, and allow her cheating blind-faked Gantenbein, and so on.

The result is a beautiful mosaic of characters that makes up the draft for the two main characters, Gantenbein and Lila, just a man and a woman, a modern couple. And of course, there is also "the situation", plotted in all imaginable ways, which may make the reader recognize him or herself sooner or later along the book.

This a very user friendly book that I would recomend to anyone needing to make a portfolio.

A great guide for student teachers and tenured teachers alike. Great guide for layout and format, what to include as well as what to exclude. Easy to use format where you don't have to sit and read, you can flip to where you need to and start. It offered a great deal in the development of a standards-based portfolio which can easily be adapted to a traditional portfolio. I definitely recommend it over many others I scoured and wasn't satisfied with.

I have to do a portfolio for a college course and am finding this very helpful.

Inauthentic (standardized) assessment in early childhood education is out while authentic (porfolio) assessment is in.

This second edition picks right up where Edition One stopped with a bit more sheen and polish. Bullock and Hawk cover the preliminary preparations for "thinking porfolio" and take the professional educator through the in and outs of constructing a useful data set that will reveal the information that you desire about your student's learning and development.

A little bit pricey (unless you get the hardback), but worth it.

While combing through "Bullock's Wilshire", a great tome of space and imagination, I immedately felt as though I had been transformed back into history. This building reflects what's GOOD about Los Angeles and what's missing with the current batch of misappropriated, misaligned, and malcontented "plastic chic" we Angelinos replace great buildings with now. Ms. Davis gives an incredible insight into the era of the true department store. A true "good buy" for any architecture officianado.

This book can only hint however the magnificince of this Truly great department store. Very nicly done descriptions and captions of each room in the store. Gives a very vivid idea of the grandeur of each department in Bullocks. An elagantly presented book at no time is the reader board or not facinated with the history or the photographs and the variouse architectural drawings.

Bullocks Wilshire represented Los Angeles during the heyday of Hollywood. Ms. Davis presents a well-researched homage to this architectural wonder and social icon, which came to be the place to see and be seen by the movers and shakers, gods and godesses of the day. What could have been a great book ends on a dubious note. Ms. Davis, an Alumna of Southwestern School of Law, sounds the praises of her alma mater, which took over the building after the store's demise in 1993, turning it into a library.

I took this course with Dr. Zupanc, and at first I thought this book went too much into detail with certain experiments. We focused a lot on certain studies -- so much so that I felt like the book was not comprehensively covering the subject. BUT after taking more courses that centered around brain-behavior relationships, the studies that Zupanc highlights in this book came together to form a larger picture. If you understand the material covered in this book, you should have a good foundation on concepts that will be covered in other courses.

So if you get past the heavy ethological point of view (it is a behavioral textbook after all), you'll be able to see and connect the ties to behavioral psychology and physiological psychology. This book leaves you wanting because it doesn't connect real world concepts for you. For this reason, I would take a cellular/developmental neurobiology course before learning systems neurobiology. For instance, I don't think Zupanc ever mentions V1 simple-complex cells, yet he spends a whole chapter on feature detectors. It would have been much more interesting for me if I had a better background before taking this course and reading this book... but that was the university's fault for not requiring that. ;) Overall, this is a good intro to behavioral neurobiology with excellent explanations of specific key findings in this area of study.

I recently took a upper level undergraduate bio class that had this book as it text book It is very much the mainstream text in this rather specialized area. There is quite a bit of information concerning the development of the area, too!

Really nice book, it has all the ingredients to make it a good book to have on your bookshelf.I highly recomend it to anyone interested in the subject, old china photographs are captivating and story telling plus the glosy paper and good quality printing make it a lovely coffetable book.

This is a wonderful visual history of china in the late Qing dynasty. It represents a wonderful era that few western eyes have really ever seen. The text is informative, and the beautiful sepia toned photos are truly stunning. If your even vaguely interested in this era of China's history, snap up this book now.

I love this book and often just browse through it out of pure curiosity. For the most part, "The Harper Dictionary of Modern Thought," is an indispensable reference book that belongs in every home library. Our book has also had steady usage from our kids who normally gravitate to the Harper Dictionary as High School term paper deadlines approach.

The Harper Dictionary explains 4,000 key terms, from philosophy, psychology, the natural and social sciences, history and politics, the arts and religion. In each case the text provides short, clear explanations written by 140 leading British and American experts. The text also provides excellent cross references to aid further investigation. All in all, this a handy academic tool to have around.

Quite frankly, this is a very impressive collection of information but one should not be intimidated. It is easy to use...(the authors dedicate a section at the beginning of the text on how to use the book). For example, as I open it to page 545, it has..."Rio Treaty, risk analysis, rites of passage." Each subject includes concise sentences with bibliographical references. This is a great book to have at home to explore areas of ignorance.

Bert Ruiz

The edition which I have, from 1977, copyright by Alan Bullock and Oliver Stallybrass, was originally published in England under the title The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought. I bought it because sometimes it might be better than the encyclopedia which was a family purchase when my children were in elementary school. The point may be that the knowledge which it presents attempts to limit itself to those things which experts in a field might agree with, instead of the kind of sweeping generalizations which the modern media have made the standard of pseudo-intellectual views commonly available to the point of intellectual asphyxiation. This book does not express an opinion directly on psychotic multiplicity, but there is an entry written by D. J. Enright, a poet, novelist, critic, editor, and publisher on "dissociation of sensibility" as the concept was used by T. S. Eliot in an essay, "The Metaphysical Poets." (1921) It applied to examples from Donne and Milton in which thinking and feeling were split, but success in this realm of thought is now deemed not to be "as precise in its effects as a lobotomy. The truth is that dissociation of sensibility has always been with us, and that unification of sensibility is a rare phenomenon, not always possible and perhaps not always called for." (p. 177) Don't expect this work to be a best-seller. This kind of thing is necessary only for those who need to know such wisdom as it contains.

ISBN 0671660055 - There are some books, especially among children's books, that you just know you're going to like. It's an attractive cover, the feel of the book in your hands, it's something - and you don't always know WHAT it is, but you always know that you're going to LIKE this book. That's what I was thinking when I picked up It Chanced to Rain.

Told in rhyme, three Rats, three Ducks, three Dogs and three Cats all go out for a walk with... two young Pigs. (I don't know why two pigs when there's three of everyone else) The day takes a turn when it suddenly begins to rain and the whole lot of animals runs for home. Once there, they all dry off and have soup, prepared by the first Pig. As they sit down to eat, they notice that the Ducks aren't there and, leaving the Rats behind to answer the phone, they rush off to search for their friends. They fear the worst when they see the Ducks' hats floating in the river, but it turns out the Ducks just like the rain. The Dogs, Cats and Rats end up with colds and the Pigs punish the Ducks for making everyone worry.

What a great rhyme! The text, by Kathleen Bullock, is just perfect. Silly and fun, it will engage every child. A few comments in parentheses ("(They must have been drenched!)") fall outside the rhyming pattern but add a cheeky touch, rather than detract from the story. There's no illustrator listed, so I assume that Bullock might have done double duty on this and, if so, she did a great job in both regards. The tree branches during the storm actually appear to be flying in the wind; the details are great and the images add nicely to the story. A great time-killing, rainy-day read that you'll enjoy reading to your child.

- AnnaLovesBooks

Children 3-8 will enjoy following the story of cats, dogs, ducks, rats and pigs who, while out walking, happen upon stormy weather. All head home to the warmth safety of their home, when it is discovered that the ducklings are missing.

Your children will enjoy learning the fate of the ducks, and their animal friends.

We wanted a particular cover so that my daughter could follow through with the book they use in class. She was quite careful to select one with the same cover - dissapointing to get another edition.

Jazz is a beautifully written account of the lives of working class African Americans in New York City during the 1920s. It is also a love story about Joe and Violet Trace, who escape violent repression in the South and come to New York City. To them, the city is a paradise. The city - and the "lowdown music" that is heard everywhere - cast a spell over everyone, but especially over the young. Eventually a young lady, motivated by the simplest and most basic needs, enters Joe's life and comes to harm.

The narrator recognizes the suffering that visits most of us in this life, and specifically the terrible suffering of blacks in the United States, but the characters in this book, through love, rise above suffering. They are a little bit better than real people.

A side benefit of reading this book was that it inspired me to read a little bit about jazz in the early 1900s and to listen to a little bit of Duke Ellington, James Reese Europe, and Louis Armstrong. So I was improved from reading the book and then improved from listening to the music.

Beloved may get most of the acclaim, but Song of Solomon (my favorite novel of all time) and Jazz are just as good, and may be even better. Jazz is certainly the most artful of her novels in terms of theme and the self-reflexivity of the language. The last chapter, in which the narrator becomes a confessional character and admits to his/her biases and fallibility stands with the "Time Passes" section of Woolf's "To the Lighthouse" as my favorite passage of prose ever published.

This was also the most difficult of Morrison's novels for me. I read it in High School and hope to reread it soon to see if a few years of intensive undergraduate English classes have sharpened my skills enough so that I can make better sense of some of the themes that confused me the first time I read it. But the style is wonderfully playful--the author is clearly having so much fun constructing this book. The didacticism and melancholy that dampen the effects of later works like Paradise and Love (due, I'm afraid, to her winning of the Nobel) are not yet evident. Sadly, this may be Morrison's last "great" novel, but I still am eagerly looking forward to her next one (according to an interview I read, it will be set in the 17th century and involve witch trials... perhaps with a Tituba-like character as the lead?)

Lastly, the reader who said that he felt he couldn't enjoy the book because he was neither black nor a woman is being embarrassingly ridiculous (I hesitate to use the word "ignorant.") I'm a homosexual white male from rural Texas, with absolutely nothing culturally in common with Morrison, and she's been my favorite author since I first read Song of Solomon when I was 15. I've since read and enjoyed all of her novels and a few of her works of criticism. It's very easy to dismiss a writer because "they're just not writing for you" than to admit that maybe there was something greater in the literature you didn't connect with. There are plenty of viable arguments against Morrison's art qua art (as there are against any work by any artist, from Homer to Dante to Joyce). Use something a little more thoughtful the next time you criticize this novel (as you are totally free to do) than hiding behind the petty shield of "Wah, Toni Morrison's not writing for me because I'm not black." To paraphrase Maya Angelou (or was it Adrienne Rich? My American Lit teacher would have my scalp), "Just as I knew Shakespeare was writing for me, as a young poor black girl in the South, so I now write equally for the old white farmer in Oklahoma."

Although this was not one of Toni Morrison's best novel Jazz was excellent, filled with love, hate, murder and suspense. Once you started reading you will not want to put the book down.

The key to understanding this amazing novel is in the title. Each character is a Jazz instrument, playing and embellishing his or her theme, then stepping aside while the theme is picked up by the next instrument/character with variations. This is improvisational music, not a composition, more like a jam session. It is therefore improvisational literature - not hard to understand, just beautiful, energetic, and extremely clever.
Enjpy!

Just finished this book, received from a friend on the used market. Admittedly, 10 years after publication, the whole "Duke thing" is about as irrelevant as is he these days. Still, I found the reading to be good (I have a basic background in social science statistical methods, which helped at times) and the conclusions of the various chapters to be interesting in speaking to subtle racial appeals in the modern mobilization of voters. When I came to type this review, however, I discovered that Duke's people are still up to old tricks; namely, flooding Amazon.com with sales pitches under various aliases for "My Awakening," which is utter garbage. I wish Mr. Duke would learn that "Mein Kampf" will remain the worldwide standard for bone-chilling racist claptrap for many years to come, and that he didn't even come close in his rag. And that people know his "anonymous review" tricks now, which he should just find plain embarrassing.

You can get THIS title (the Kuzenski et al volume) at a decent price these days, and if you're interested in the politics of race ANYWHERE in the U.S.-- particularly how racial appeals are creeping back into our political discourse from the far right-- it's a better-than-decent read.

Unfortunately for Mr. Duke, it appears that he is headed for Federal Prison for a few months. Hopefully, he'll take the time to actually read our book so he can provide us with a more informed review that is constructive, rather than just self-aggrandizing. We'd enjoying hearing his informed thoughts, which could be quite interesting. Maybe, just maybe, then I'll read "My Awakening" and review it for Mr. Duke.

I find it interesting that the editor of this college textbook (source book)about my campaigns and the politics of race in the South went out of his way not to ask me for an essay on the subject. Is this book supposed to be an unbiased academic survey of my impact on the politics of race in the South, when every article is hostile toward me and my ideology? Would it not be appropriate to include an analysis by the man at the very center of the controversy? I am sick of the so-called academic community, which is supposed to support diversity of opnion and open-mindedness, repeatedly preventing students from getting all sides of important issues. How can students taking a course where this textbook is used, obtain a balanced view of these important issues when they purposely are prevented from hearing from the person at the very center of the controversy.

I don't blame students from having a negative opinion about me and my political methods and ideology when they are not allowed to hear my side of the story.

Those that are interested in hearing my position articulated in detail can order my book, My Awakening from Amazon. Only then can you truly make a fair assessment of myself and the vital issues which propelled my candidacy.

I thought this was a good and comprehensive volume on the whole "politics of race in the South" motif, and have found it useful in my research. The fact that Duke apparently thinks it should have been about lionizing himself and his pseudo-intellectualized racism (e.g. his amazon.com review) isn't surprising, but it's a solid point in favor of this book, if you ask me. Good social science and interesting perspective in most of these chapters, backed by reasoned analysis of the larger picture-- the rebirth of race as a divisive issue in regional (and national?) politics. Funny how this title is now 5 years old, but still speaks to things like the current confederate flag controversy in South Carolina. Emphasis on electoral phenomena, but enough to keep a public policy-oriented type interested as well.

I have read your book about David Duke and found it to be rather good. You had a lot of good points. I consider myself to be very objective, so before I could give an opinion, I had to read David Duke's bood called "My Awakenning". To be honest, I have never read any racist material before and I don't belong to any racist groups as I find them to be quit offensive. I was actually shocked to discover that David Duke's book was very good and he had better arguments than this book did. He challenges his readers to find out the truth for themselves by searching over his footnotes and resources which I did do. To my surprise, he was right about every fact in his book. He gave better arguments than this book did, in fact, this book took many of his things out of context. If you read this book about David Duke, than make sure you read his book before you make a decision or a judgment about Duke. Remember!, that an informed opinion is better than a one sided opinion. I am a capitalist but be sure that I read things like "Capitol" vol. 1 by Karl Marx before I read things like "Capitalism the Uknown Idea" by Ann Rand. Objectivism is the true intelectual.