Netherlands Books

this book is not mainly based on project drawings and photographs besides there are very useful articles. if you deal with the academic perspectives on urban design you should have this book. but if you want to delve into projects this is not a suitable one.

This is THE history of Indonesia from the Portugese to the Second World War. Vlekke's work is comprehensive and accessible. He goes into detail explaining the various myths that both Europeans and Indonesians used to explain the course of events and cunningly weaves the real story of the East Indies out of hundreds of years of betrayals, deals, wars, famine, disease, prosperity, peace, and commodities trading.

My major gripe is the maps. They are incomplete--Vlekke mentions dozens of places that aren't on them. It's hard to find good maps of the region and a history of this nature should take pains to have adequate cartography to accompany the text.

basically unreadable, but to join verhoeven with the ranks of kubrick, hitchcock and fellini is just pure genius. and oh the pictures are really nice.

Muizelaar and Phillips start by giving us some fascinating glimpses of the material culture of the Netherlands, especially Amsterdam, in the 17th century. The focus of the latter two thirds of the book is "the role of paintings in the lives of wealthy Amsterdam families, particularly those in which human figures feature prominently". Indeed, they rely heavily on inventories produced by one man, Jan Pietersz Zomer, one of the first in the emerging 17th century profession of art dealer.

The authors remind us that the picture which these paintings present - the fair of face, the cultured, sunny skies - are idealised, or exaggerated - drunken low-lifes, tavern scenes, the evils of tobacco and gambling - just as in today's scenic and humorous postcards. I wanted to know more: what do the (more true-to-life) drawings and prints tell us? the lyrics of popular songs?

What of sources from other cities? Amsterdam was one of the largest and richest mercantile cities in the world: what about industrial Delft? the university town of Leiden? the aristocrats of the Hague? and what about the country folk ("boeren", farmers as well as peasants)? On the vexed question of gender roles, why were the four officially-appointed valuers ("schatsters") in Amsterdam all women? what do the records of their guild tell us?

And crucially, I wanted to know how Amsterdammers from all walks of life dealt with the contradictions between what these paintings show and tell, and their heart-felt religion, which the clerics of the Protestant conversion ("de Alteratie" which formed Amsterdam) preached from the pulpit and the pamphlet. The extensive bibliography signposts some paths for further searching.

This book is a great history book to add to your family library. It is historically accurate and uses terms general enough for a young child to handle. The story is written in large print, suitable for an early reader. There are several pictures featuring artwork of the time period as well as portraits. This could be a great tool for completing your homeschool curriculum or for extra reading on the topic of Thanksgiving.

I have old Dutch-English, English-Dutch dictionaries that I bought in the Netherlands in 1980 that were published by Prisma. Assuming this is the same publisher (can't tell really since there's no cover or no Look Inside) I would highly recommend these books. Matter of fact, I'm buying new ones myself to get an updated version.

There are the words themselves, but an entry contains all parts of speech in which the word may be used, including things like suffixes or prefixes that are added to turn it into an adverb or adjective as well as idomatic uses. In the back there's a list of words that sound the same in both languages, but have different meanings; a conjugation list of irregular verbs, place names, and info about Dutch and English and American money, and metric conversions.

They don't waste time teaching grammer, because there are already plenty of books for that. This one is just chock full of words.

The only weird thing is that they appeared to have trouble putting the pages in order in the actual construction of the books. I have some pages of L words that followed the P section, etc. The pages were all there just out of order.

My English-Dutch book was missing the whole of J-N. I'm assuming these glitches have been rectified in the 26 years since I've been there. I'm taking a risk and buying them anyway.

Veel success!

~Deb

This book is a well-written summary of the research on larger foraminifera which the author instigated and supervised during his long career as a micropalaeontologist. Drooger's established a school of thought in this specialized field, and all his students are well-represented in the book. It is probably one of the most comprehensive textbooks on Tertiary larger foraminifera, but there are still a few groups missing: the soritids, for instance, and most of the nummulitids, although the latter are, strictly speaking, not radial.

It could be argued that the specialized subject stands in the way of Drooger reaching a broad audience. But this is also due to a lack of imagination on the author's behalf. Other evolutionists have drawn very interesting general conclusions from specialized subjects (Darwin was inspired not only by finches but also by barnacles, worms, and rather obscure plants), but Drooger does not do that. He only arrives at a general conclusion, i.e. the validity of the principle of nepionic acceleration (which was first put forward about 60 years before this book was published). Drooger identifies several apparent exceptions to this rule, though, and only in one case does he come up with a suitable explanation: repeated large-scale migration (in the European lepidocyclinids). This is not applied to the miogypsinids and lepidocyclinids of SE Asia, where it could have been considered. General considerations on how natural selection works on foraminiferal morphology are missing. It would have been very interesting to learn about why it is that becoming radial is just one of the few adaptive strategies available to larger foraminifera. Instead, Drooger marvels at the various ways in which various groups of foraminifera reach the radial Nirvana.

Even after reading the entire book from front to back, one is still left with the question of how to apply one's newly acquired knowledge. Zonations based on larger foraminifera do exist but are hardly mentioned, and certainly not developed further, in this book. This may be due to the fact that such zonations are based on all sorts of larger foraminifera, not only radial ones. But it is also true that Drooger is not really a stratigrapher. His evolutionary lineages are plotted in morphometric scatter diagrams rather than displayed against geologic time. I suspect that the author, rather than limiting himself to his strenths here (which is a good thing), was quite shy to show his weaknesses (which he fails to admit). After so many decades of intense study, mainly sponsered directly or indirectly by the petroleum industry, this absence of direct practical stratigraphic application is a disappointment, because the applications certainly do exist.

Still, it will probably be a long time before a book like this will be written again. I hope it will be re-printed soon.

This book results in a very interesting overview about the problems of the big-scale in the hybrid buildings, with the privilege of been told in the first person by one of the most important builder of the contemporany city.

Schmitt's novel is written around the life of Rembrandt van Ryn. Whether the story she relates of his life is 100% accurate I have no idea. She supposedly read numerous documents (many in the original Dutch) to piece together his life as far as she possibly could.
Overall it is a good read and if you either have an admiration for Rembrandt or an artist and you are in the mood for a novel then you might as well give it a go. Some judicious editing may have been able to reduce the number of pages from 600+. The novel touches on, I presume, the major components of his life - from his childhood working in the family mill, an unfinished college degree, his yearning for painting, leaving Leyden to apprentice under Lastman in Amsterdam, his being discovered, his major works and the circumstances leading to their creation, his wives, children, patrons, etc.
It makes for a good read - in the same mould as Van Gogh's "Lust for Life" by Irving Stone. Although the numerous references to breasts has me wondering about which team Schmitt played for.
Schmitt, a poet and novelist, was a professor of english at Carnegie Mellon Uni in Pittsburgh.
Again, just want to reiterate that the book might not be 100% accurate - afterall it is listed as a novel as opposed to a thesis.

This fictionalized history of the settlement of the Dutch in Pella, Iowa is definitely worth reading. It's an inspiring story of the faith and trials of the Dutch people escaping persecution in the Netherlands and establishing their colony in the Pella where they relish their freedom to worship without the interference of the government. Gives a new appreciation for religious freedom that we enjoy here in America.