Individual Parks Books

having read rita dove's selected poems, i know she has written good poems (the adolescence poems, in the old neighborhood, the thomas and beuleh poems), but these poems don't have the same quality of her previous works. the poems in this collection don't have the narrative quality that made thomas and beuleh so good. the cameo sequence of poems is simply a poet trying to be difficult or experimental but not succeeding. the political preachiness wears on the reader after a while.

Here's a former poet, who has turned the corner -- producings works for mere commerical gain.

This collection of poems is a fun variety of rhythm, imagery and humour. I found this collection a great daily read.

The first set of poems, "Cameos" are wonderful snapshots of the African American community. Dove does something that is very difficult and takes on the voice of different generations and genders in the same family to let us see inside the group. July 1925 had a great story. "Night" had a great rhythm and "Lake Erie" had wonderful unusual imagery.

As the collection progresses we move to more stand alone poems but they are all there to create new voices. She does what a good poet wants and takes a common theme and makes it new. A perfect example is "Parlor." We are dealing with death but with a bit of humour in the background.

The later poems are from a series on civil rights and Rosa Parks and are just as intriguing as the earlier voices, the views of a culture different from my own.

I took away from this collection that it was not a book about civil rights as so many thought from the title. But that it is a book about "Riding the Bus with Rosa Parks" in the sense that the African American community, especially the female sector, want to join that tradition and to honor what it means to be a part of the sector of the community.

If you want to read a very talented poet then I strongly suggest this collection. As noted, it isn't a collection soley focusing on civil rights. It is an anthology of unique voices.

Rita Dove continues to milk the cow of her racial specialness by writing about an era (or images of an era) she was too young in which to participate (as well as being too safely ensconced in the middle-class to feel its genuine horror). Thus her poems have all the touches of William Wordsworth's "emotion recollected in tranquility" but lack the immediacy of the real perils Rosa Parks and her comrades experienced. There is some brilliant writing here; but now the patina of political correctness is wearing thin. Ms. Dove, as all the Iowa City grads, has mastered that somber, priestly, and overly-dramatic voice common to poets who've take on the mantle of greatness and who presume to be the moral authorities in our lives by telling us "the truth" and all things that "truly matter". This book reads as if it's destined to be another book of the Bible, meant to last forever and meant to be the correct gloss on the African-American experience. Instead, its pendantic solemnity returns its focus over and over again to Ms. Dove's self-absorption and to the sad fact that she is, in the final analysis, a person removed from history (by class rather than race) and the mainstream of American life, black or white.

At first glance, one may think this book to be a collection of poems dealing with the civil rights movement. Dove illustrates her poetic talent, however, by writing about the struggles in the lives of her fictional characters. In fact, the only references to Rosa Parks are in the chapter named after the book itself. But by looking beneath the surface of Dove's poems, it becomes clear to the reader why "On the Bus With Rosa Parks" is a very appropriate title. Rita Dove uses Rosa Parks as a sort of personification of the recurring themes in the poems. Rosa Parks represents hope, living life to its fullest, and the idea of ordinary people overcoming adversity to do something extraordinary. It's wrong to downplay this work and say Dove was too young to accurately illustrate Rosa Parks' effect on the Civil Rights Movement. For one thing, I think we all know of her significance, no matter what age or race we are. But also, a reader of this book needs to look past the title and see that this is not just about Rosa Parks, it outlines *human* struggle, not just African American struggle. I highly recommend it...

I kept waiting for a twist. Nope.
Read it if you're a fan of cloying Briticisms.

If you're a kayaker, you're bound to love this novel: It has an ultra-authentic ring to itself, from the logistics of arranging a shuttle to the place where you exit to the smell of the wetsuits in the very cars that provide that service. You'll end up looking for the Aurino, the river depicted, thinking, *well, would be worth a try*.

It's one of the few novels where kayaking isn't primarily a metaphor for something else, but where you can almost *feel* the water... then again, in some ways it *is* a metaphor, of course, especially when one thinks of the somewhat contrived political rift between the rugged, stoutly anti-globalization activist guide and between his yuppy banker clients who end up acting more responsibly when it comes to the fate of those close and personal rather than remote and exotic.

The ending was disappointing for me, kind of loose, in a way, like a river taking you away, with a couple of different outcomes. Unfortunately, Parks takes leave of his rather grim realism towards the end, when a miraculous survival of resuscitative efforts raises no further eyebrows as she makes it without brain-damage, and that, somehow, invalidates the whole set-up. It was as if the author had been keen on finishing the book off, no matter how, and if the whole book essentially amounted to little but a sequence of well-described river runs - something that also makes sense when one thinks of the rather bland other characters featuring.

So - if you're a white-water enthusiast, you're going to read this book in a single session, and like it - just as I did. If not, it'll leave you annoyed, as it seems to be a good opportunity wasted, wasted by a fine writer. And that's a shame, really.

Not only did I learn an enormous amount about kayaking in dangerous waters, but the character development was really interesting. The characters were beautifully drawn,unexpected, and weird. Most of all, I found this novel on par with a book like Krakhauer's 'Into thin air' where they climbed Mt. Everest. It is an A-plus thrill ride for people who prefer to read about dangerous adventure vacations rather than actually do them. Could not put it down!

the closed mind apparent in the tone and content of the other reviewer states all you need to know about their ability to review the book. Perhaps if this person went to a Hadid project, instead of judging it via the media (which they perversly declaim) they might understand the work's power, its significance and its warmth. Or perhaps they should stop living in fear. It is the other reviewer that needs to grow up; oh, and try thinking. Anyway, its a good book.

Put simply, the design is cold, brutal, ignorant and devoid of any redeeming human qualities ... in short, it is representative of most of Hadid's oeuvre. That she appeals to so many younger people has more to do with flash computer graphics than any valuable lessons in architecture. This is kid's stuff, not the work of a sohisticated or intellectually mature architect. If you are the sort of person who is impressionable, this book is aimed at YOU. For an architectural education, try a book on Barragan, Scarpa, Renzo Piano, Fay Jones or almost any practitioner capable of actually constructing a well-designed building. This is graphic hogwash. Eye-candy for infant minds.

Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates
Allegheny Riverfront Park
Source Books in Landscape architecture 1.
Jane Amidon, Series Editor.
Princeton Architectural Press, 2005.
ISBN 1-56898-504-5

The two main models of design publication that we are used to: the collection of projects or the corporate monograph are both neatly avoided in this, the first in a series of booklets from Princeton Architectural Press. The series is a really nice, unpretentious idea - one that has already been successful for Princeton Press in regard to architecture and one the series editor, Jane Amidon describes as a response to the `hunger for transparency'. Amidon promises that the series will take us backstage and give us an unvarnished view of the design process.

The idea is this. Each booklet is a synthesis of a seminar series held within the Knowlton School of Architecture. The seminars bring students, critics and one eminent or as they say, `emerging' designer together in the spirit of open and `critical inquiry'. Each consequent booklet then contains a mix of (very) short solicited essays, crisp interviews with the designer(s) and illustrations that divulge the process of the project's realization. The students who apparently bring the information for the booklet together have of course vanished by this stage.

Each issue is soft back, squared off, printed on nice paper and can be read from start to finish in about an hour or so. Each includes project time-lines the odd technical detail and a bit of site history. They are neat little educational documents - catalogues to be precise and one looks forward to further installments and being able to buy the box set after all is said and done.

Despite being 160 pages this particular volume feels like half that. It is very light on text and there is an excess of meaningless photography soaking up space which in my view should have stayed on theme and shown us more of things backstage. There is, for example virtually no documentation of the creative process of designing this park. There is the proverbial shot of people on site in hard hats and other ones of people in the office staring down at models but the content of the book doesn't quite meet the series mandate.

Even though I prefer the idea of focusing on a particular project and getting in to one designer's head than what has been a recent spate of global collections, I'm not convinced that the Allegheny Riverside Park by Michael Van Valkenburgh and Associates (MVVA) really needed a book(let) all of its own. As such this booklet goes very close to worshiping the banal. Having said that, the Allegheny Riverfront Park is a brilliantly controlled piece of work, one with three important sub-texts.

First, even if its hard to really see it as a park in the grand democratic tradition that he places it, Valkenburgh has made a functional, generous and simply beautiful sliver of public space out of what seemed like an impossible site. Valkenburgh fattens up the river edge with a clear infrastructural intervention and breathes a naturalistic, yet urbane poetic in to what was otherwise Pittsburgh's lifeless edge.

Second, whereas collaborations with artists have become something of a cliché, in this project it is genuine and the book accounts for why. The art is not a spilled souvenir shelf, rather, it is embedded and the resultant details are subtle. As art however it could be criticized for its limited representational scope, but landscape architects like art that is based on what they call `nature'.

Third, through the interview format Valkenburgh muses on his design philosophy. In what is a thinly veiled swipe at emerging `landscape urbanism' in some prominent north American schools, Valkenburgh expresses skepticism about programmatic open-endedness. He advises that landscape architects assert their traditional design skills and return to their core skills and know their essential materials--not least of all plants. His use of plants, and for that matter his attention to materials in general, manifests beautifully in the project at hand. Apparently an artist as well as a landscape architect, Valkenburgh likens his current direction to that of the mid-century abstract expressionists who rejected representational content and returned art to its essence.

The critics, who have the last say, are unanimously enamored by the warm glow of authenticity that Valkenburgh exudes. Gary Hilderbrand writes a lovely endorsement, although I think he struggles a bit to place the work historically. Another (so called) critic, Ethan Carr thinks the project gets to the quintessence of its location (the holy grail of landscape architecture) and Erik de Jong concludes that the project is the embodiment of beauty; not just beauty as we know it, but as the Greeks did. Unfortunately she is cut off before she can flesh out this vast claim.

I don't think this booklet has really described the messiness and the struggle of design processes and nor has it completey avoided the style of the corporate monograph or advertorial. Still, the series is a good idea and the landscape profession and discipline will be better for it. Perhaps the singularly most successful thing in this booklet and no doubt from those to come in the series, is that the gap between theory and praxis is compressed.

A fantastic introduction and discussion in the introduction by Elizabeth Meyer of UVA. No color photos, but good drawings. Excellent writing in architctural theory

This book is somewhat technical and has many charts and graphs. It is quite detailed with scientific information about the lives of wolves in Alaska today and parts are very interesting reading, especially if you love wolves. There are not as many photos as I would have hoped.
Also be careful if you are buying hard cover used books, there was no dust cover on this one which was dissapointing even though this was in the seller's description.

Randall Riese takes a different approach to the life of this legend than other authors have done in the past. The result is a virtual encylopedia of Bette's life and career. This book is a good reference tool for the begining davis fan. You can look up her films, her co-stars, directors, almost anything. The book is filled with info nuggets and photos that haven't been published before.

This book is good as a factual guide about la Davis' life. But the author sneers and blasts nearly all of Davis' movies, merely repeating what other uninformed hacks have critiqued. He misquotes all over the place. Instead of Davis saying in the movie "Beyond the Forest" the line: "If I don't get out of here, I'll die!", the author has her saying "I've got to get out of here!" His contempt for his subject makes him a very unlikely candidate to asess this great artist whose movies today hold up better than nearly any other star of the 30s and 40s. While he completely destroys Davis' films like "Beyond the Forest" and "In This Our Life," both films have generated tremendous re-evaluations for being the masterpieces they are.

A lexicon of Bette Davis. Unique in its style, but thoroughly enjoyable. What's great about it is the fact that you can pick and choose which topics you'd like to read about, and skip over those that don't spark your interest. For example, it lists every street address and city in which Bette lived, and in what years. Unknown facts like those make this book exciting to read. And being from Boston, born and raised, anything on Bette Davis (especially since I can actually visit her homes in Lowell & Newton) is worth reading. In response to one of the previous customer reviews on this book, yes it's true that this author does bash and criticize nearly all of Bette's films. I heartily disagreed with some of his reviews, but just remember, everyone's entilted to his or her own opinion. What they say is not gospel. A great concise conpendium of facts perfect for the Bette Davis fan.

This book had duplicate copies of the same pages and pictures. Some of the pages were inserted upside down. This book was very poor quality. I was very disappointed with it.

The images are not crisp and sharp. This is not Galen Rowell's best work -- and I suspect it has more to do with the quality of the printing than the original images -- but one just can't tell. I would recommend his book, MOUNTAIN LIGHT over this book. The Sierra's are naturally beautiful and this book falls short of representing this area well.