Adams Books

A philosophical enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful, 1759

Burke points out the things all around us that we take for granted but which really are absolutely amazing in his discourse on the sublime. A galloping stead, the expanse of a starry night, or a range of towering, snow-capped mountains. Burke points out these awe-some sights which in themselves provoke us to ask of their origins.

This book can be repetitious as Burke attempts to make, especially on taste, his point absolutely clear (I've got one of the later editions - 1772.).

Additionally, some of the lines in the book are near-timeless and are good to have around to reference from.

Edmund Burke's 1757 treatise, "A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful," is a clearly written, well-argued, and variously inflected work of philosophy. Coming out of and contending with the traditions of philosophies of passion, understanding, and aesthetics from Aristotle and Longinus to Descartes, Hobbes to Locke, and Shaftesbury to Hume, Burke would seem to be taking on a world of difficulty at the tender age of 28. However, Burke manages to maintain control and exercise great wit in his treatise by confining his "Enquiry" to the ways we interact with the physical world, and how in this interaction, we formulate our aesthetic ideas of sublimity and beauty.

Burke's "Enquiry" is divided into five parts, with an introduction. The introduction is perhaps his most witty segment, as he tries, as Shaftesbury, Addison, and Hume before him, to formulate a standard of Taste, a popular subject of conjecture in the 18th century. Physically, and not without some irony, he chooses to speak of Taste primarily as a feature of eating. In response to his predecessors, though, he does say that since our attitudes toward the world come from our senses, that the majority of people can see (sight being very important) and react; thus all people are capable of some degree of Taste. Education and experience, he must admit, though, do refine Taste. In Part One, Burke examines the individual and social causes which arouse our sense of the sublime and the beautiful, those being the primal feelings of terror/pain and love/pleasure, respectively. Throughout the "Enquiry," Burke insists that these are not opposites strictly speaking - that pain and pleasure are mediated by a neutral state of indifference, which is the natural state of man. (Compare that idea to Hobbes and Locke!)

Parts Two, Three, and Four find Burke explaining his notion of the passions in relation to his basis of the physical world. Grandeur, potential threat, darkness, and ignorance for Burke excite our nerves and produce the sublime, a feeling of terror which is simultaneously delightful as long as it does not cause immediate pain. These he finds both in the physical world and in tragedies of literature and history. Smallness, softness, clarity, and weakness delimit the beautiful, which produces affection and sympathy. The contrasts and interventions that Burke makes throughout the "Enquiry" on these bases are variously inflected with issues of anxiety over gender roles, race, and power. Burke's politics give the work a joyful and troubling complexity to the literary minded.

Part Five, then, is a look at the effect that words, language, and poetry can have in influencing our affect in regards to the sublime and the beautiful. In it, he gathers together statements he sprinkles throughout the treatise on the nature of poetry - that its emphasis on representation of emotion, rather than imitation of objects, gives it a power that is perhaps unequalled even by nature. In Burke's "Enquiry," one can see a nascent fascination with landscape, mystery, and sensation that would find its flowering in the Gothic and Romantic movements of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His insistent break with earlier philosphers who combined aesthetics and morality is a serious challenge to moral philosophy with regard to art and Taste. His physical descriptions of emotional response prefigures Freud's psychological ponderings in "Three Essays on Sexuality" and "Beyond the Pleasure Principle," as well as linguistic theory. In all, a fascinating and complicated work for being as short as it is.

This review is dedicated to the memory of Vernon Lau. Unfortunately, Burke did not deal in the "Enquiry" with the pain or terror of immediate personal loss. One can only wonder if Burke's obsession with philosophical distance between people and fear wasn't motivated by a loss of his own.

Burke's Enquiry is a surprising and remarkable little work. If you expect the Burke who fits your stereotype of the conservative Tory politician, that is not what you will find here at all--but rather a clear and insightful discussion of our feelings and emotions of awe and beauty in nature and in art, and especially poetry.

Based on self-observation and reflection, Burke takes a scientific, almost Newtonian approach to the fascinating question of what it is that makes us feel the presence of the sublime and the beautiful.

These are amazing observations for a 28-year-old--remarkable as well because they were written in 1757. Consistent with the 18th Century outlook, he refers to the emotions as "the passions," and it's obvious he's done a good deal of thinking about them.

The sublime, for Burke, is generated by passions connected to self preservation and which "turn on pain and danger. They are simply painful when their causes immediately affect us. They are delightful when we have an idea of pain or danger without being actually in such circumstances. This delight I have not called pleasure because it is different enough from any idea of positive pleasure. Whatever excites this delight, I call sublime."

By beauty, Burke means the quality or qualities in bodies by which they cause love or some passion similar to it. He makes sure to distinguish love from lust or desire. This is quite a different view than the Platonic view of beauty as resonant with eternal forms and ideas.

Burke identifies specific qualities that generate beauty: to be comparatively small, smooth, having parts not angular but melted into one another. He cites the example of a dove as a creature having this beauty.

There is a big difference between admiration and love. The sublime, which is the cause of the former, always dwells on great objects and terror; the latter on small ones and pleasing.

Burke's Enquiry refers almost exclusively to the physical and emotional properties, and he provides many examples of shapes and forms which do or do not evoke the sublime and beautiful--so that we can be clear about what he is talking about. This work is concrete--not at all abstract as one might expect of a philosophical work.

Will today's readers find Burke's work interesting? It's a good bet that many will. The idea of the sublime seems a bit dated, yet it is still with us in great natural scenery, the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, etc. And something very much in evidence, for example in the popular photography of Ansel Adams. The concept of beauty in today's popular culture has become so watered down (there's now a beauty "industry," complete with beauty "products") that it should do the contemporary reader good to consider Burke's idea of what true beauty is. There's good reason to hope the idea of beauty in art and poetry may make a comeback--and not be viewed as elitist or aristocratic snobbery.

Oxford's good little edition contains the Introduction on Taste, which Burke added after 1757, and a good chronology and textual notes.

Remember taste? That is something people used to strive to possess. In the tastelessness of this postmodern world, a little consideration of taste would do us all some good.

... A special feature of this book is that many of the drawings and engravings are on facing pages, or else on the same page so that they may be compared. As the engravings were done by others, the chance to make comparisons is delightful. The drawings have a warm light brownish tint from both the ink and paper and the engravings are black and white. There are days and hours of visual interest here.
... The text is informative; both scholarly and readable. The main catalogue has a huge 16 page bibliography (3 columns per page) and an index. The first 84 pages contain 5 chapters, by different authors on aspects of his work. Detailed information on provenances, literature and sizes are also provided. there are 274 illustrations.
... Also quality paper has been used in the book; highly recommended for the 'Pieter Bruegel the elder' lover.

Proof of art is in strong impact on later generations and timeless appeal: both describe this first major exhibition of PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER: PRINTS AND DRAWINGS. His art had been the source of many copies, of which the most often copied was "Winter landscape with skaters," and late 16th- and early 17th-century imitative works, such as dotted atmosphere and forms around grainy ground and trees by Master of the Mountain Landscapes and Jacob Savery, thick forest wildernesses by Gillis van Coninxloo, and winter skating by Hans Bol. We mainly know him through his art and that of sons Jan and Pieter the Younger: most of his 40+ surviving paintings are from his last seven years, such as "Fall of the rebel angels," "Sermon of St John the Baptist," and "Wedding dance"; and terror against heretics, Protestants, and subversives by the Duke of Alba in Brussels wore away his final two years, finding expression in "Blind leading the blind" and "Magpie on the gallows" bitterness and sorrow and in many, ominous "Summer" knives. We think of him immortalizing peasants with "Kermis at Hoboken" and "Kermis of St George," proverbs with "Big fish eat little fish," and winter scenes with "Ice skating before the gate of St George" and "Winter landscape with bird trap": he has been admired for applying an Apelles-type imagination to Hieronymus Bosch-type allegories, with the reptile lying down in "Luxuria" and upside-down frog in "Superbia," and to Eupompas-type nature. He was one of the first Northerners to take on post-Leonardo da Vinci Italian landscape style, coming up with distinctly Flemish scenes, stocky peasants and wide open naturalism, with Sistine Chapel sacrifice of Noah-type hugely solid countryfolk in "Beekeepers," Federico Barocci-type line-flowing tree trunks and white stippled foliage in "Wooded landscape with a distant view," and Cornelis Massys-type commonplace woodland scene and Titan-type balanced composition, broad-reaching lines and cotton-wool foliage in "Wooded landscape with mills." He kept manuscript illumination and miniature painting traditions going in "Tower of Babel" with Giulio Clovio-type teeming, tiny figures. He touched on religion, but by uncommon subject with the Christ-told "Parable of the good shepherd" and "Parable of the wise and foolish virgins" from the New Testament and with "Suicide of Saul" from the Old Testament; and by unusual presentation with the contemporary, stagelike "Death of the virgin." He dipped into comic genre without ending up second-rate with the carefully cross-hatched and solidly outlined "Ass at school." The lasting, widespread popularity of his art was partly due to his designs for prints, whose final look he controlled with Maarten van Heemskerck-type highly specific detail and with printmaker-friendly shading and textures: "Landscape with bears" was the first of 32 drawings directly modeled for prints; and "Rabbit hunt was the only print that he created, with distinctly outlined, light-filled foliage and imposing mountains broadly hatched and finely speckled and with its dark theme of soldiers distressing peasants the same as his "Massacre of the innocents" painting and "Milites requiescentes" print. So Nadine M Orenstein has edited a clearly organized, compellingly written, and wonderfully illustrated book which pools excellent examples of art, along with PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER books by Walter S Gibson, Rose-Marie Hagen et al, and Wolfgang Stechow and PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER AT THE KUNSTHISTORISCHES MUSEUM IN VIENNA by Pieter Bruegel.

L'artiste est un grand maitre lorsque ses oeuvres sont impactants, d'un gout eternel. En fait, le Paysage d'hiver de Pieter Bruegel pere se trouve entre les oeuvres d'art les plus copies et imites du monde. La plupart des quarantaines de ses peintures survivantes datent de la derniere decade de sa vie. Il est le peintre incomparable de la comedie humaine, dans l'Ane a l'ecole; des paysages flamands au style italien, dans Paysage emboise avec une vue lointaine; des paysans, dans Kermis du St George; et des proverbes, dans Des grands poissons mangent des petits poissons. Il honore les manuscrits enlumines et les miniatures, dans la Tour de Babel. Ses dessins destines aux gravures sont des chefs-d'oeuvres de details, grains, nuances et textures.

Arguably the greatest Netherlands painter and draftsman of the 16th century, Pieter Bruegel was a well traveled artist. Documentation shows that between 1515 and 1553 he made an enviable journey through France and then to Italy. While in Rome he worked with a miniaturist, and was inspired by the Alps that he saw during his return to Antwerp.

A quiet man he was, nonetheless, given to pranks of a slightly frightening nature, very often surprising his students. What comes as a surprise to many today is the recent scholarship which sheds light on not only his life but his work as a draftsman and printmaker, extending to the social and political ramifications of his creations.

This magnificent volume is the catalogue for an important exhibit of more than 140 Bruegel prints and drawings. Included are scholarly essays as well as comparative illustrations. It is a valuable contribution to the annals of art history. For laymen it is a work to be savored and treasured.

- Gail Cooke

Know these Vignettes! Nothing more to say. They will be tested over. Period :) Terribly boring subject, but points are points.

Using this review source helped me sleep better before the exam, because I felt ready for the "case-based" style of the boards that everyone kept telling me about. This is a great series, but I don't think it should be used as a stand alone review source. Case-based coverage of topics means that some topics are missed/not covered. However, the topics covered by this volume were very high yield for my exam. Definitely worth the money!

Not a big fan of behavioral science, but this book makes it bearable by focusing on what you'll be tested on and helping you distinguish similar conditions from each other. Good biostatistics section also included. Great information and great figures to help you understand the info. Strongly recommend - the rest of the series is also outstanding.

I'm not much for writing reviews, but this book and series helped me so much I felt obligated to let people know about it. I'm very interested in psychiatry, which is why I applied to medical school, thus I wanted to write a review on this particular volume of the series. This book is composed of 50 case presentations with questions at the end of each case, followed by the explanations/answers to the questions.

The cases and explanations are superb, concise and get right to the "meat and potatoes" of every subject. After taking step 1, I can recommend this format without hesitation. I also thought the BRS Behavioral Science review book was very good.

Know these Vignettes! Nothing more to say. They will be tested over. Period :)

There was a lot of material in the books in this series, yet I found myself getting through them quickly and retaining a lot of the information, I think because the material is so well presented and explained. Great cases and the format is tailor-made for current USMLE format. This author really understand what the board question writers are into. For me, this type of review was the best way for me to get ready for Step 1.

This is wonderful review books. Excellent writing and informacion. Great pictures and examples. I do much, much better on exam from this books.

After studying like crazy for a full month for the USMLE, I needed a break from reading textbooks. I decided to check out this case-based review because a friend recommended it. I am still thanking him for this recommendation. This book and the other books in the series really prepare you well for the USMLE, because they get you used to the long clinical vignettes that made up most of my exam. The cases and explanantions are EXTREMELY high-yield and very concise but thorough. I recommend the whole series for anyone who wants to do well on the Step 1 exam.

the poetic edda is one of the greatest collections of poetry of all times. it contains the beautifully vivid "volupso", the norse apocalypse poem, the comedic ballads, the "wrangling of Loki" and "Lay of Thrmy", the proverbial wisdom of the "sayings of har" and the mournful lays of the larger-than-heroes, the volsungs and niflungs. the edda is better written than Beowulf, the more popular northern epic, and the rhythmic verse gives it more aesthetic appeal than most epic poems. the meter, based on alliteration and caesura, whether rhythmic fornyrdislag or lilting ljodahattr, is much more pleasing to the ear than classical blank verse, which has sticter syllable stress patterns. unfortunately, the edda is not in very good condition. their are gaps in the manuscripts, and there are numerous places where it appears a scribe covered up a gap with extraneous material. the poems vary greatly in quality, and you need a good understanting of norse myths to understand what is going on (i recommend Norse Stories: Retold from the Eddas by Hamilton Mabie). none the less, the edda is a wonderful read for fans of poetry, epics, or norse mythology.

Bellows translation does a very good job at preserving the metric rhythm of the norse poems, and a fairly good job of preserving the alliteration, while avoiding the archaism of Hollander. his grammer and word choice is a little "olde", but it is still far more aesthetically pleasing the Larrington's translation, and much more accessible than Hollander's. Dronke's translation is also excellent, but only one of five parts of it is currently in print, and it is absurdly priced, but see if you can find it at your library. unfortunately, thus far Dover has only reprinted half of Bellows' translation, this volume contains only the "mythological" lays, so we can only hope they will publish the heroic poems soon, but anyone serious about reading the edda will want to get more than one translation anyway.

A Dover reprint of the Mythological section (The Lays of the Gods) from the poetic Edda, a collection of Old Norse poems compiled in the 1200s from older oral traditions. First published by the American-Scandinavian Foundation in 1923. It's a slow read, primarily because almost every page is crammed with footnotes. The translation seems pretty good - it attempts to imitate the form of the Old Norse poetry, and the language at times is very moving with vivid imagery and sonic resonance. The abundant footnotes bog down the reading, but they are necessary since the Eddic poems were originally composed for an audience already familiar with Norse mythology. I went into this book knowing nothing about the subject, and by the time I had finished, with the help of Mr. Bellows' notes along the way, I had developed a real thirst for more. Somewhat difficult reading, but for somebody with a literary bent this is an excellent introduction to the world of Norse legendry. It certainly begs a second reading, ignoring the footnotes and just enjoying the poetry.

This is an excellent translation from Henry Bellows, easy to understand and with many footnotes. This is the version I use when I read the poems aloud.

The spelling he chose for transliterated names doesn't follow the common style, Voluspo is usually Voluspa, Hovamol is usually Havamal, etc, but these differences are minor and easy to get used to. The print is a facsmile (typical of this publisher) but clear and easy to read, and the binding is good quality (unlike products from some similar companies).

Unfortunately Dover only published half of the book, the section referred to to as the "Mythological Lays", and have omitted the "Heroic Lays", assuming I suppose that we'd only want to read the poems referring directly to the gods. They do clearly admit the omission at the beginning of the book. Much of the ancient scandinavian works we have are regarding heroes related to the gods, so to focus completely on the gods themselves is to miss pieces of the whole picture. Some researchers (in the minority) even suggest that the "Heroic Lays" are actually stories about the gods under different names, which was a very common practice (as you'll see when you read the poems that are included). So I consider the omission very unfortunate.

Despite that complaint I think this book is worth the cost. Unless you want to print your own (the Bellows translation is in the public domain), this book is an excellent choice for what it does have. Just be aware of what you're missing.

Edit: Dover has recently announced that they will finally release the second half of the book, The Poetic Edda: The Heroic Poems (Dover Value Editions)

This is the "bible" for Asatruars and Odinists everywhere. This book is pretty easy to read once you figure out the way the words are arranged. Foot notes include variations of translation, and so sometimes the reader must come up with his/her own conclusion about a certain word or name. All in all, the Poetic Edda, whoever originally composed the works, is a great read and can be enjoyed by poetry collectors, lovers of mythology, and people who are interested in ancient Norse storytelling.

Brilliant introduction to the field of political philosophy, first and foremost with a view to the English-speaking liberal tradition. Easy to read, yet this thematically structured book covers the most important topics in depth.

As a Habermasian and Scandinavian social democrat, what Swift presents as leftist views appears to me to be the views of the centre-right. Still, the book's exquisite conceptual rigour (which one would expect from an analytical philosopher) actually helped me sharpening my understanding on liberty/freedom within the Scandinavian model of distribution.

Overall, this book is highly recommended. It presents itself as a beginners guide, but is has a lot to offer to the advanced reader as well. For example, Amartya Sen's name is not mentioned in the chapter on social justice. Yet over a few paragraphs, elegantly interwoven in the general text, Swift explains the basic structure of Sen's so-called "capability approach".

I've been using Adam Swift's Political Philosophy: An Beginner's Guide for Students and Politicians (UK) in my Political Philosophy course this semester, and, having now had several students thank me for assigning it, I should probably recommend it more widely. The book is written at an angle to my course. The course goes through the main ideas of various important contemporary theorists of justice: Rawls, Sen, Nozick, Milton Friedman (ok, he's the odd-one-out, but my view is that nobody should leave college without reading chapters 1,2 and 6 of Capitalism and Freedom, and I abuse my position as a professor to do my bit), Kymlicka, Okin, Fraser, and G.A. Cohen. The book is more conceptual; it consists of chapters on Social Justice, Equality, Freedom, Community and (in the new, second, edition) Democracy, which go through various distinctions and problems in thinking about those concepts, and it only refers to the work of particular philosophers insofar as it is relevant to the problem at hand. The book also includes a lovely discussion of the division of labour between political philosophers on the one hand and political activists and politicians on the other, and offers a semi-sympathetic diagnosis of the reasons that politicians often seem to be such uncareful thinkers about matters of value. It really is a superb piece of writing, accessible to anyone with an interest in these matters, but somehow achieving the accessibility without compromising the complexity of the issues in question.

I usually feel obliged to talk in class a good deal about the books I assign, but I haven't been talking about Swift's book much because it getes everything right (so nothing to argue with) and is written with such precision and transparency that there's nothing to clarify or explain. I do frequently use arguments or ideas from the book when explaining particular positions in the authors we are studying. I had expected some irritation from students for making them read a book that we don't discuss, but, as I say, several of them have (I suppose rather insultingly) thanked me because they find that it is an easy read that illuminates the other readings (more than my lectures do?). Its a great book for anyone who wants to understand better what political philosophers do, especially I would say if you have a background in the social sciences, and the perfect holiday gift for the politically engaged but intellectually serious young person in your life.

This very well written book is a nice introduction to contemporary political philosophy. Swift's approach is a bit unusual. Rather than a traditional historical approach, Swift has selected 5 of the most important themes in modern political philosophy; social justice, liberty, equality, community, and democracy. Swift is mainly concerned with providing readers with the essential intellectual tools to approach these themes. He provides a series of concise descriptions and discussions of contemporary thinking about the themes. Swift's primary goal is not provide a comprehensive analysis of contemporary thinking but rather to present clear definitions of the key questions and fair depictions of the most important approaches to those questions. Swift tries to present the best aspects of different approaches. He is not, however, uncritical. In the spirit of clarity and presenting good examples of careful analysis, he articulates strong criticism of some widespread but erroneous views. Von Hayek, Berlin's influential Two Concepts of Liberty, and Communitarian criticisms of Liberalism get very effective critiques. Each section has a good final section recommending further reading.

Now in a revised and expanded second edition featuring a new chapter specifically about democracy, Political Philosophy: A Beginners' Guide for Students and Politicians by Adam Swift (Fellow in Politics and Sociology, Balliol College) is a highly accessible text for students, lay readers, and novice political philosophers concerning basic political principles that are used to govern society. Chapters describe and discuss philosophical constructs such as social justice, liberty, equality, community, and democracy, and especially dissect common misperceptions and assumptions concerning the denotative meaning of certain principles and labels. Laden with examples designed to prompt the reader to think long and hard concerning what political concepts such as "social justice" truly mean, Political Philosophy is enthusiastically recommended not just for students, but for anyone seeking to prepare themselves to cast a well-informed vote in elections.

As the other reviewers have said, this book is an update from the 1975 (or so) edition which was an inspiration at the time. What seemed the most useful in this edition is an updated seed type and source list, since you are looking for compact forms of most items.

I miss the graphic artist who was involved in the first book. The pictures in the new book are charmless. And the new book lacks the diagram of double-digging that is hard to explain verbally.

And I'm just about to get started this spring on a potato barrel. It would seem like a good candidate for mentioning postage-stamp-wise, yet is not covered.

I am a gardening dummy and found this book to be a real "bible" for me when starting my first patio and small in-ground garden plot. This books really lays it all out for you. They go into detail about how to do things organically, as well, if you want to go to all the trouble. But they also tell you the easier alternatives (like buying store organic fertilizer). I would recommend this book to new gardeners as well as experienced ones -- lots of tips on how to get all types of vegetables producing a lot of food for you, when to plant, what to plant with, etc.

...and if this is as good as that one (circa 1975) then it gets 5 stars. I (like the author) too had been failing miserably in gardening - until I read his book. Unlike many other books on the subject of bio-intensive gardening, this one was encouraging and made it sound so easy. It ended up being very easy and very rewarding. Now I tell everyone - double dig, amend heavily, plant close together. Get this book!

I've grown vegetables in the past, when I was a teenager, but now that I'm going to try again in my thirties, I wanted to brush up on the best way to get as many vegetables as possible out of a small mountain garden. Following the authors' directions I measured my space, made a list of the number of plants for each vegetable based on the size of my family, and then used their spacing recommendations to see if it would all fit, taking into account intercropping and succession planting. It all turned out to be fairly easy to accomplish (on paper at least!), and I'm now shopping for seeds. I'll update this review next fall with my results.

In 250 pages, Jeremi Suri manages to do what other books do in four times that length. Suri makes brilliant connections between all aspects of the Cold War and what happens beyond it. Suri is an incredible writer and historian (see: Henry Kissinger and the American Century) and deserves recognition for his comprehensive and concise works.

Although the other reviews I read here were justifiably positive, I just wanted to mention that this book is also a very worthwhile read for almost anyone with a passing interest in recent American history and its impact on modern politics, irrelevant of the readers background. Jeremi Suri writes in a wondefully clear and concise manner that allows the reader to immerse themselves in the period of history he is discussing and consider it from every perspective without any particular bias. I highly recommend this book to everyone -- if you buy it you will not be dissapointed.

In this book, Suri puts a new twist on the period of detente in the late 60's and early 70's. He explains how the social uprisings centering around 1968 forced world leaders in the United States, Europe, and Asia to pursue detente in order to keep reign on their legitimacy domestically. The research and documents used in this book are both credible and excellent. I had Professor Suri for a class and he is an excellent lecturer. This book is like a lecture from him, but he has time to go into even deeper detail on the subject at hand. We were required to read it in his class, but it is a book that I have read twice since then because it is that good. Anyone with interest in the Cold War or US foreign policy will love this book!

The main thesis of POWER AND PROTEST is best summarized by author Jeremi Suri himself at the end of this brilliant and original exploration of post WWII international relations and their impact and continuity with domestic policy: "In previous decades [the 40s through the early 60s] the Soviet-American rivalry had provided a simple bi-polar framework for both competition and cooperation. This inherited architecture now proved inappropriate for a world in which citizens besieged their leaders, small nations challenged the influence of larger states [France and West Germany; Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the East] and China acted as an independent great power [dealing directly with France, for instance, instead of through their "big brother states, the U.S. and Soviet Union]. The international environment had grown multipolar, but the United States and the Soviet Union desired the continued power and standing they had possessed in the earlier bipolar setting. What Kissenger called a new 'structure of peace' would protect the benefits of order and stability for the largest states despite the fragmenting trends in world affairs. This was the conservative core of detente, and the drive behind the central accomplishment of the superpower summit [between Brezhnev and Nixon in 1972]" P.256.

His supporting thesis that "The strength of detente derived from the fact that it addressed the fears and served the interest of the leaders in the largest states," is well and amply proven with reference to original source material from each period he explores. With state documents and memoirs, he dramatically shows the panic of the world leaders as they confront their suddenly, inconveniently active citizens, who, given reason to hope in the early 60s with their leaders' charismatic rhetoric about the "New Frontier," the "Great Society," "Great Leap Forward," "Communist Construction (and DeStalinization)," ironically had their rising expectations dashed by the very same men those who activated these hopes. In their tussle for power, and in their attempts to prove their systems or their insight into world and domestic politics were superior, Mao, DeGaulle, Kennedy, Johnson, Krushchev, Willy Brandt, and others came to fear the chauvinistic idealism they had unleashed in their charismatic rhetoric. Ironically, this leadership cohort, especially the most powerful actors, the U.S. and Soviet Union, felt compelled to reach out to each other, put aside the inflammatory anti-communist and anti-capitalistic rhetoric, and demonstrate to their unruly citizens and client states that as nations they could and would work together in peaceful coexistence. Suri likens these two states to "overmuscled wrestlers" who were constrained by the potential of mutally assured (nuclear) destruction to muzzle their client states' inflammatory rhetoric. The exception that proved the rule, according to Suri, was Vietnam. It was seen by Kennedy and Johnson, as well as by Chinese and Soviets, as a proving ground that would show which set of political arrangements was superior. Far enough away from the U.S., China and the Soviet Union, it met the requirements of a showcase war for all.

As Suri says: "Each of the great powers gained from stability when confronted with the prospect of wide-spread disruption. D?tente assured that the international system would operate smoothly so long as policymakers adhered to their objective 'national interests.' The problem, Suri suggests, is that national interests are "not objective laws, but instead contested ideas," and that "Detente's fatal weakness grew from its inability to address the claims of citizens and small states that refused to accept the status quo because of its perceived injustice." By this he means "From the day that Nixon and Brezhnev signed the Declaration of Principles through the end of the 1970s, the leaders of the great powers suffered repeated criticism for ignoring concerns about national self-determination, human rights, economic fairness, and racial and gender equality."

He notes that "Agitation around these issues had triggered the global disorders in the 1960s that initially made detente appear necessary as a source of stability. Ironically, political leaders reacted to the criticisms of injustice voice in the previous decade by isolating and containing dissent rather than by creating new sources of popular consent." "Detente reflected traditional balance-of-power considerations, but also included a set of policies that deliberately constrained domestic dynamism. Instead of eliminating the suffering and dissatisfaction in the Cold War, it tried to make it all seem 'normal.'"

Global protest, Suri suggests, was given impetus by state programs. College loans and grants, necessary to build a new technocratic citizenry who would through science demonstrate the superiority of their respective political systems, backfired as thousands of young people were herded together in colleges and universities all over the world. There they found a literature of dissent waiting for them by such authors as Solzhenitsyn, Marcuse, Galbraith, and Harrington. Armed with these anti-state and anti-"system" discourses, students around the world developed a common language of dissent and protest, a language soon taken up by the disspossessed all over the world.

Summing up, he says, "Skepticism toward authority is now a global phenomenon" that has grown out of the conservative core of detente and its stepchild, globalization. "Leaders are no longer loved or feared. In some of the largest democracies they are ignored by as much as half of the electorate, which refrains from voting. Leaders are frequently profaned by international media that play on public distrust of politicians. In this cynical environment, we are still living with the dissent and detente of a previous generation."

POWER AND PROTEST is a landmark work of history. Scholarly and highly readable, it is unsurpassed in tracing the roots of dentente as a conservative reaction to the political engagement of the demos across all types of states.

I was amazed at the effects that this book had on my Bird-brain. Our mind is only limited by our beliefs. The author backs up all of his assertions with facts and real life examples. Several mind-expanding accounts of people all over the world who are not limited by a "confined consensual reality". Changes your beliefs and your experiences will follow. I highly recommend reading this book.

Powers of Mind is brain candy. It is intuitive, original, and fascinating. One of the most informative and interesting books on the subject that I have read. The author lightens up normally dry reading with humor, sarcasm, and other literary devices. If you are interested in the extended issues of psychology, and parapsychology, then this book is a must read. Everything from LSD and "mind opening" experiences to ancient perspectives and interesting historical fact.s

One of the best non-fiction books to come out of the mid-1970s was this wonderful tongue-in-cheek exploration of a whole raft of different mind-expansion techniques by the best-selling author Adam Smith. From Rolfing to EST, Smith includes us in his often humorous attempts to gain genuine insight into how the human mind works, and how we can each individually overcome the limitations, liabilities, and lamentations associated with living with our minds. And, as Smith tells us again and again, your mind is not necessarily your friend.

Although he writes in a self-deprecating and quite comedic way, often he uses his wry and laser-sharp mind to show us things well worth knowing. Indeed, this book is not a throwaway effort, but is a very helpful and essential guide to a plethora of different philosophies, techniques, and modalities dealing with different ways of gaining further self-awareness. Smith asks himself if he really could, as is claimed by some adherents, learn to control his blood pressure, stifle headaches, or learn to pop himself into an alpha state? And by the way, he asks, what is an alpha state, and why do we want to achieve it? How useful is meditation, and what can it really do for us?

In reality, this is aground-breaking effort to introduce the field of consciousness psychology, of the whole field surrounding questions of the mind-body connection and how to approach getting involved. What makes sense and what doesn't become more apparent as we accompany Smith through adventures in Arica, or Transcendental Meditation, or what Dr. Herbert Benson of Harvard refers to as the post-relaxation response. In an aside, Smith begins to question his own ideas about what is real and what is not, and the ways in which our own so-called reality paradigm predisposes us to seeing, interpreting, and experiencing the world around us in a particular way.

I found myself particularly astounded by his own experiences in a sensory deprivation tank, and how he seemed to experience out-of-body experiences associated with these excursions to the far reaches of consciousness exploration. I lost my only copy of the book in a fire last year, and just recently re-acquired another copy through the Amazon out-of-print book service. It is an unqualified joy to be re-reading it again after all this time. Do yourself a favor a get yourself a copy too. I know you will love reading it too. Enjoy!

5.5 stars

You will NEVER find a better deal on this site than Powers Of Mind for a penny.
This is one of the most underrated and unfairly forgotten books I can think of. When I found it in my Dad's library and read it at age 12, it changed the way I saw life and my mind and why I am on this planet.
Reading it 30 years later, it's just as powerful and enjoyable.
Smith is really George Goodman, a brilliant mind who wrote some of the best books on money and Wall St, including Paper Money and The Money Game. Here he turns his brilliant brain to the various modalities of consciousness expansion around in the mid-70s, the peak of such pursuits. From yoga to acid, biofeedback to tennis, sensory deprivation tanks to EST, and on and on, he checks it all out. What makes this book so enthralling and loveable is the author's constant awareness of multiple perspectives and his willingness to be deeply curious, wrong, and in awe, often all at once.
Smith calls it exactly as he sees it; if he thinks something or someone is a fraud, he gently points that out. If there is more to something or someone than meets the eye (a major theme), he evokes the mystery while never judging or discounting the "impossible". It's tough to write about the nebulous, but Smith does it in such an elegant way that you feel both smarter and happier every time you put down this book. He's also funny as hell at many points; imagine the 200-IQ uncle/grandfather/best friend you always wanted, and here he is.
Great writing can be like a drug in your brain, expanding and enlightening your basic take on the world as you read. This is just such a book.
I can not recommend this book highly enough. At a penny for a beautifully bound hardcover first edition, this is well beyond the no-brainer category. It's a full-brainer, and it'll be even fuller and happier once it's encountered this book.
God bless you, Mr, Goodman, wherever you are. You've made my life a lot more fun.

If you have been looking for a book to make you feel good about being good to yourself, this is the one to read.

Enjoyable,inspiring and easy reading for those of us who put "us" off.

This is one book that you will keep by your bedside, carry with you to the beach or to the office. In these stressful times being alone is often suspect, considered, somehow, a failure. Ruth Fishel gently takes us through our days, our fears and our longings and offers a means, through solitude, to find our true Selves. "Precious Solitudes" is a loving companion, reminding us daily that we are precious and our time alone is precious.

A book with an inviting title that delivers what it promises. Precious Solitude is a perfect retreat companion, but provides an extensive menu of ideas for how to relax, refuel, and rejuvenate even with our everyday lives swirling madly around us. Adopt just a handful of suggestions from Ruth Fishel's latest and relearn the meaning of the word "calm." You'll be glad you did -- and honestly, so will those around you. Incidentally, if you're tempted to dismiss the notion of solitude as an unimaginable luxury, then you need this book even more than most of us!

I've always had a problem with being quiet and alone with my thoughts. Ruth book includes the thoughts and feelings of a diverse background of people toward the subject of solitude. I found that I'm not alone! Precious Solitude frees the reader to transform any negative feelings toward solitude to something positive and productive.

I found a personal message in the chapter titled "Walking". I'm working on loosing weight and my doctor told me I have to walk 1-hour a day. No skipping - no excuses! I've been ignoring his directive for two weeks now. I just couldn't find anything productive about walking alone an hour each day. I've put all of my energy into not doing it and complaining about how hard it's going to be. "Walking" changed my perspective on the entire situation. Now I'm looking forward to my 1-hour walks. I'll have time to myself to think, plan, enjoy nature, get centered, focused and loose weight! I learned that solitude can be a very productive time!

Precious Solitude is written in small vignettes and is very easy to read. Excellent book!