Berg Books

I wouldn't recommend this book to any serious researcher. This is completely inaccurate picture of the agression on Bosnia.

First, allow me to state the obvious fact: Mr. Kohlmann seems completely oblivious to the long history of secularism in Bosnia, particularly among the Muslim population. For corroboration and a meticulous analysis of Islam in Bosnia, please see Noel Malcolm's masterpiece Bosnia. Furthermore, of all the Muslims in the world, Bosnian Muslims are irrefutably the most secularized ones. In point of fact, religion has always had a rather insignificant role in the social life of the Muslims in Bosnia. Given this incontrovertible fact, how can anyone even attempt to link the Muslims of Bosnia to the Muslims in Afghanistan?

Mr. Kohlmann claims in his book that Bosnian Muslims were collaborating with the Muslims from Afghanistan in a joint effort to unleash unprecedented terror throughout the Christian world. This assertion is so absurd that it warrants no serious comment. Kohlmann bases his argument on the fact that a small number of Mujahedeens arrived in Bosnia in 1992 in order to aid Bosnian Muslims in the war. While this is true, Kohlmann simultaneously fails to mention another equally important fact, namely that many Greeks and Russians also came to Bosnia in 1992 to help Bosnian Serbs. Pertinent to the context is also the fact that the Bosnian Serbs were heavily armed whereas the Bosnian Muslims were practically powerless and defenseless. Bosnian Serbs not only received reinforcements from the neighboring Serbia, recruits from all over the world, mainly from Russia and Greece, joined their Orthodox Christian brothers in a crusade against Islam. Mr. Kohlmann simply ignores this fact because after all in his mind the Muslims do not have the right to defend themselves even though he knows that the war in Bosnia was a clear and unequivocal case of Serbian aggression.

Paradoxically although unsurprisingly, one cannot find a single word in his book of the Orthodox Christian fundamentalism. Kohlmann also does not mention in his book that Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic have been hiding in Serbia for almost 10 years now despite that they are wanted for war crimes by the War Tribunal in The Hague. These notorious war criminals guilty of egregious atrocities are considered heroes in Serbia; this does not bother Kohlmann at all, nor does the fact that the Serbs committed one of the worst massacres in Europe since World War II in Srebrenica killing approximately 8000 people. Why do not these abhorrent war crimes against the Muslims infuriate Mr. Kohlmann? Why is it Kohlmann that of the six hundred mosques in Bosnia, every single one was destroyed by the Serbs between the years 1992-1995? Conversely, if the Muslims of Bosnia are such fundamentalists as you so adamantly assert, why did almost every church remain intact following the war? Why is it that when you ask the Serb population of Srebrenica what they think about the massacre of 8000 Bosnian Muslims, they simply reply: "I do not care, that was a long time ago".

Thus, this book contains nothing but cunning and pernicious propaganda, the sole purpose of which is to promote hatred and vicious lies. If you want to make some money very fast, all you have to do is to write an anti-Islamic book. What is more, you do not even have to base it on facts, lies and distortions will do just fine. If you really want to learn the truth about Islam, then read books by intellectual writers such as Edward Said, John Esposito, Karen Armstrong and Bruce Lawrence.

I really hope that people will one day be able to judge others not by their race and religion but solely by the content of their character. Will that day ever come?

This book is a pathbreaking piece of research into two underexplored aspects of contemporary terrorism. Author Evan F. Kohlmann outlines the trajectories of Arab-Afghan veterans of the anti-Soviet jihad and subsequent civil war in Afghanistan during the 1980s and early 1990s. He also looks to the origins and patterns of mujahedin activity during the 1992-1995 wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The result is a deeply disturbing illumination of late twentieth century Islamic militancy. Both troubled states attracted fighters from across the Greater Middle East and North Africa, and although many of the leading jihadists in wartime Bosnia made their reputations in the earlier Afghan conflict, Kohlmann portrays both states as roughly parallel forges of extremist sentiment. Al-Quaida's Jihad in Europe traces terrorist trajectories from the Peshawar-based Mujahedin Services Office, across the mountains of central and southwestern Bosnia, to London's infamous Finsbury Mosque and the metropoles of Western Europe and North America.

The weight of the book is on the Arab-Afghan migration to Bosnia-Herzegovina. As organized combatants, the contribution of mujahedin units to the Bosnian Muslim war effort was clear: their fearlessness under fire, and their consequent impact on military goals, was undisputed. Their lack of discipline and total disregard for the laws of war, on the other hand, were a liability to the government of Alija Izetbegovic. As religious colonizers, their promotion of conservative Islam also conflicted with the laissez-faire attitudes of Bosnian Muslims. Kohlmann addresses this ambiguity quite adroitly, exploring official reluctance to deal with the post-war settlement of foreign fighters who shed blood in defence of their admittedly obscure Bosnian Muslim brethren. Between 1995 and 2001, these contentious remnants of war became regional outposts for transnational terrorist networks. Numerous post-war terrorist incidents have been traced back to the Afghan-Bosnians, but intervention forces in the Western Balkans ensured that the security spotlight never wavered far. The Al Quaida attacks of 11 September 2001 precipitated a sudden shift in foreign policy attention to Bosnia, and in its own government's approach to domestic counter-terrorism. The country quickly became a second front in the war on terror, at a time when patience with the Balkan quagmire had worn thin.

Equal parts travelogue, journalistic exposé, think tank inquiry, and independent research, Kohlmann's work is part of a newly emerging strand of scholarship that explores some of the hidden micro-histories of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Such authors as Cees Wiebes, Marko Attila Hoare, and Charles R. Schraeder have touched on this uncomfortable aspect of the conflict. Kohlmann addresses the issue in unprecedented detail, exploiting a wide variety of available sources to piece together a largely neglected segment of contemporary Bosnian history. Extensive North American and European media coverage, declassified intelligence documents, and legal case files form the backbone of the study, but interviews with radical clerics, and excerpts from jihadist internet and video propaganda, provide critical insights into terrorist preferences, motives, and interests. Kohlmann offers no overarching theoretical arguments. The book, instead, is descriptive and empirically rich: the author's main accomplishment is to document the many terrorist incidents the Afghan-Bosnians perpetrated in wartime Bosnia, and post-war cases of terrorist activity rooted in their far-reaching network.

This book is also useful for the light it sheds on two related issues that have taken on striking policy relevance since the global war on terror began: the nature of terrorist sanctuaries, and counter-terrorist approaches to stamping them out. NATO's intervention in Bosnia after 1996, interestingly, is given the feel of an early denial-of-sanctuary operation, of the sort more commonly associated with post-9/11 Bush Administration counter-terrorist doctrine. For the professional mujahedin of Afghanistan and Bosnia, constantly in search of violent outlets for their religious convictions, sanctuary has clearly not been the same thing as safety. Many of them were committed jihadists before they ever fought the Soviets in Afghanistan and the Serbs and Croats in the Balkans. They remain a mobile diaspora whose members have been unable to return to their countries of origin, and the sanctuaries they sought out have been a mix of combat zones, staging areas, logistical bases, planning centers, transit points, and ideological enclaves. This reader, for one, anxiously awaits further scholarship on sanctuary in terrorist thought and practice. The one major failing of Kohlmann's study is the poor quality of its editing: the text is full of the sort of typographical errors that should have been picked up in a thorough copyedit. A work of this importance deserves better treatment by its publishers, and one hopes that a second printing will see a more polished product.

Michael A. Innes
book review in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, March 2005

This book is the most comprehensive analysis of the foreign Mujahideens role in Bosnia. Concerning Larissa 1 star review of this book: I find it hard to believe she even read the book enough to realize the authors intentions in his writings. She complains that Kohlmann does not see the whole picture of the Balkins and is under the impression that the author was trying to give an overview of the entirety of the Balkins and its culture. She says, "Kohlmann should perhaps confine himself to the details of the terrorist groups and avoid writing about areas such as the Balkins." That is exactly what Kohlmann did in this book and which was the purpose of this book: to write about the Afghan Mujahideen and foreign Muslims in general who came to Bosnia to fight, and Kohlmanns analysis of the after effects these elements had. Larissa's critique is irrelevent. If you want a book that explains the Balkins, its culture, with emphasis on Yugoslavia (Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia) then yes, one should look elsewhere. If you want a book that covers the element of Islamic radicalism, then this book does exactly that, and Kohlmann was not attempting to do more than that! Infact, Kohlmann does not even bother to give a brief summary of what the war was about and its probably wise that a reader should do some basic research on the war before starting this book, as this book was written with the intention that the reader already understands the basic macro topics.

As for Srebrenica review of the book, I doubt this person even read much of the book. Srebrenica claims Kohlmaan could not see the secular trend of Bosnian muslims as opposed to extremist ones, when the book covered this topic in-depth throughout the chapters, even stating that Al Qaida's failure to setup a perminent base in Bosnia, similar to Afghanistan, was the result of incompatibilities with secular Bosnian Muslims who love to drink alcohal! This was a major aspect of Kohlmann's thesis covering the post-war stance of the Mujahideens in Bosnia.

Ignore these 1-star reviews, as they really are irrelevant to the data in this book as well as Kohlmann's objective in writing this book. The book is not about the Balkins and its many ethnicities. It is about the role of Mujahideen in Bosnia and the compatibilities of Islamic radicalism and Bosnia's secular Islam. If the book tried to be anything else, it would go off topic. This book deserves attention for covering a such topics that are overlooked in the world of Islamic resistance. My only complaint is that it would have been nice if this book had a map in it.

Professor Kohlmann may have good facts on specific terrorists but he does not see the whole picture of the situation in the Balkans.

The region is known for having many languages, ethnic groups, and religions. To be sure there have been problems but the groups have co-existed for a very long time and that it is unlikely to change.

It is likely not to be doubted that there are alliances between the Afghani groups such as Al Qaida and others in Bosnia and elsewhere. But to assert this lacking the overall context, it is not useful.

Professor Kohlmann should perhaps confine himself to the details of the terrorist groups and avoid writing about areas such as the Balkans where he lacks the expertise to make incisive comments.

As just one example, he fails to grasp the role of the various Orthodox Christian groups in the region. Even though this would be a book of its own he should certainly make some mention as he establishes a theological backdrop by invoking the Islamic element.

This book does not convey much of anything. Save your time and money. Read Searching for Bobby Fischer. The details and honesty are lacking in this made for MTV summary of kindergartener makes good.

This is the best book I ever read! If someone doesn't understand the book, I suggest reading "Modern Chess Openings."
The 3 games taught me: pawns are important, 2 rooks is better than a queen, and gambits are not dangerous, lik the QG. For beginners and experts, chess knowledge blongs behind this book!!!

please go to ............................ to see an in-depth review of this book from an adult chess players point of view. In fact, the reviewer, Mr. Winer actually played Michael Thaler at an open tournament in Wash.DC last year and had some astute and very positive, thought provoking conclusions about the value and content of this book. This book is clearly a wonderful primer for the young chess player both from a practical standpoint as well as a guide to the rules of preparation for all challenges to the young student.

Six-year-old Michael Thaler became the National Kindergarten Chess Champion in 1999. The book follows his brief career to date and imparts the life lessons Michael has learned through chess: prepare, focus, win some, lose some, have patience, etc. These are difficult to learn lessons for most adults, let alone children. Still, the author very clearly demonstrates Michael's passion and talent for the game.
The book takes a turn for the worse when the narrative details three games Michael has lost and learned from - and rehashes them in complex chess code without any explanation save an unexplained diagram! Who is this book for? Not for the novice chess player, and not for your average 8 year old. A brief chapter on basic moves, or even a glossary (what is an opening? An endgame? The Scandanavian defense?) is decidedly lacking.
The art design of the book is a little disturbing - the designer opted for contrasting colors instead of chess-themed black and white. The cool tones on the cover are nice, but inside, nothing seems to fit together. A checkerboard motif is repeated throughout, and the border wittily changes from pawns to kings as Michael progresses. Lots of white space makes the book easy to look at, but the readability of the text is very uneven. David Hautzig's photos are evocative, but it is disappointing that the same picture was used at the beginning of each new chapter.
A thoughful afterword by Michael's dad encourages parents to introduce their children to chess, and mentions its benefits. Suggestions for starting a local club or finding a teacher or evening contacting the National Organization could have made a useful appendix.
Hardly a necessary purchase, briefly consider it for chess fans. Best to save your money until - or if -- Michael reaches master status.

This book falls way short of my expectations. The book has a grand total of 44 pages -- and 3 of those are totally blank sheets. If you're expecting a story even remotely similar to "Searching for Bobby Fischer" you will be very disappointed. If the Waitzkin book is a 10 on the chess prodigy scale then this would surely be a 2 at best. The editorial reviews are almost as long as the book and tell you exactly what's in the book. There is nothing more. If you expect to learn much of anything about this kid you will surely be disappointed. The chapter by Mr. Thaler is the best but only a couple pages long. It is a nicely produced book -- slick paper, hardcover, color photographs -- but the real content could have been summed up in probably less than 10 pages. If you find a copy to borrow and skim it for review you'll have already read the entire book. Save your money. It get's two stars only for the production value of the book and very very limited content.

While I found this book easy to read, it is one where the reader needs to be alert, aware and open to the author's important statements, insights and ideas, as there is no clear lead up to them, they just seem scattered here and there. It is perhaps a book more suitable to the person who has read material covering topics such as the power of the mind and the subconcious, as well as metaphysical and astrological interpretation of the Bible.
I did find that the numerous editorial/descriptive comments relating to the book and its aim misleading; such as, 'In these pages, Rav Berg reveals: How to reclaim the power of self-determination in every area of your life..' but the book itself never does this as a stand alone book. In order to understand and incorporate the ideas of the author into one's own life, one would really need to read his other books. For example, central to the author's work are his concepts 'The Desire to Receive for Oneself Alone', and 'The Desire to Receive For The Purpose of Sharing', yet one reads on and on waiting for a discourse on them, never to arrive, Even the chapter headed 'Restriction' doesn't go into what restriction stands for.
I think it would have been honest to say, 'read this book, but you need to read much more of my works, or become a student'.

Good book, but not of the caliber of the others I have read on the topic. Maybe a little too advanced for me at this time.

This book will teach you that you have the power to change your life and take control of it. It will help you discover how to take away your "ego" that controls you and brings chaos to your life. This book is a book to discover yourself and your potential.

This book is poorly written. Perhaps it would be helpful for someone who has already studied Kaballah, but I did not find it to be a helpful introduction.

I don't know where to begin. The "teachings" in this book simply have nothing to do with any form of Kabbalah. Berg is attempting to create a non-Jewish, for-profit version of Kabbalah by creating his own religion, and its just plain embarassing. This book in particular is just pop-psychology.

Frankly, all of Berg's books on Kabbalah are full of terrible translations, censored and edited texts, and horrible commentary. His "explanations" are rejected by all Jewish authorities, Orthodox and non-Orthodox, religious and academic. Berg is attempting to create a non-Jewish and for-profit version of Kabbalah, and it is just embarassing. Instead of reading his nonsense, please check out books on this subject by real authorities and good writers:

Read, for instance, "The Jewish Mystical Tradition", by Ben Zion Bokser; "Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism", by Gershom Scholem; "Zohar: Annotated & Explained" by Daniel Chanan Matt and Andrew Harvey

I would also suggest "The Wisdom of The Zohar: An Anthology of Texts", Ed. Isaiah Tishby, and translated from the Hebrew by David Goldstein.

This book is a real disappointment. There's very little actual helpful material to improve your reading speed. Moreover, it hardly covers sub-vocalization, which is a mayor factor inhibiting your readingspeed. The hand exercises are silly and will not increase your speed. A large and useless part of the book only covers texts for practising, like you can't practise on any other texts... Buy another book.

This book really didn't accomplish what it set out to do. It started off with the claim that the reader will not only read faster, but that reading comprehension will increase. The only real speed reading excercises are for viewing (not reading, as the book says) large chunks of text quickly. But it ends there. There are no tips about comprehending material while viewing it quickly. There are tips for memory retention and classic conditiong for relaxation (both of which you can find in an Intro to Psych class), as well as smart ways of how to read texts (look at charts, topic sentences, etc...), but nothing about understanding the chunks of text we are "viewing" quickly. I admit that after doing these dizzying excercises, my regular reading for comprehension increased in speed a little bit. However, it is still not up to the rate I would consider "speed reading."
Final Verdict: If you really want it, check it out at the library or buy it used. But look for a better book first.

After ordering this book I let it sit around for several months before getting to it. I was not expecting much at all. I had some free time this morning and read the whole thing. My reading has gone from 200 words per minute to about 800 in just a few hours. I am quite impressed. I have now been reading all day. The more I practice the techniques in this book the faster I read. This is after just a few hours! More importantly, I am now comprehending and retaining printed material much better. A great book for the price.

Save your money. More than half of this book consists of "practice" texts--and, of course, you can practice on any book you happen to be reading.

There are a *few* useful exercises, which include reading two lines at once, then 5, then whole paragraphs, then whole pages. You can't read like this for comprehension; the authors have you do it to get used to scanning segments of text at once , rather than single words. Another exercise has you read for one minute for comprehension, another minute at double that speed, and another minute at triple. These exercises DO help, but as far as speed reading instruction goes, that's it. Really.

There is also some very basic instruction on memory-enhancement techniques, nutrition, posture, previewing texts, and so forth--standard stuff.

In short, this book is a waste of money. Tony Buzan's book "Speed Reading" is far better. Some of the older speed reading books offer far more in the way practical instruction than this book does. "Double Your Reading Speed," published in 1964 by The Reading Laboratory, comes to mind.

Wow, it's amazing how much this book will help you improve your reading time. I can't believe I've been reading word by word my whole life when i could be reading huge blocks-and comprehend everything!

This book tries to show how to 'do ActiveX' without explaining what ActiveX (or COM) is. It gives some 'recipes', but doesn't explain the gotchas. As far as recipes go, some areas that were important for my project were missing (variant and safearray manipulation, threading models) I think anyone whose serious about ActiveX programming (especially the distributed-computing part) should have some understanding of the inner-workings of COM. This book does not touch this issue at all. Another issue not touched is the structure of ATL and the OLE parts of MFC (which is hard to explain without explaining COM first). So I'd say this is book is good for someone who needs to get something out the door tomorrow, assuming that the book's 'recipes' cover all the project's needs (which is not very likely...)

Gotta give it to them, when time is money, having full examples for MFC and ATL implementations of the same COM Servers is very very useful. The BaseCtl versions are very specific to a framework very few people even heard about. Two out of three ain't bad. But reality is that there's a third approach that's only lightly touched upon, and that's straight API calls, straight, that is, with VC++5's help. VC++ is getting to be COM savvier all the time, and here is another flaw in this book: instead of talking about both sides of the C/S COM relationship, and mentioning the latest VC++5 wonders like the client side #import statement, the smart pointers and so on, they talk about "containers", like from the old OCX days. COM is a much cooler and wider world than just a way to create ready-made GUI components. Where this book feels dated is in its focus on the server side of the OCX type COM object. Wish they came out with an addendum in electronic form, 'cause at $50 with no CD, it's a little like those one-of-a-kind GM transmission wrenches, which are inescapable when ya need them, but later earn slightly resentful glances taking up space on the wall. But that's still a solid 8, maybe a 10 if ya got a transmission to work on today.

To say that the authors of ActiveX programming with Visual C++ 5.0 have a firm grasp on ActiveX programming would be an understatement. This book is very special because it has side by side examples of ActiveX Automation Servers, ActiveX Controls, and Com Object written in three different styles. The styles that are compared and demonstrated for you are MFC, ATL, and BaseCtl. In other words you can learn how to program ActiveX three different ways with this book. Because of it's scope the book makes for a handy reference when you know how to program in one style and want to learn the other two.

Besides the introduction there are three sections, ActiveX Automation Servers, ActiveX Controls and COM Object each section is done three times, once for every programming style. Plus, the section on ActiveX Controls has another chapter for advanced programming of each style. To their credit the authors cover every part of ActiveX programming. However, the examples lack depth, and length that would make this an excellent book.

This book is a must have for the intermediate ActiveX programmer, where one technique is already mastered and others need clarification.

You can find more book reviews by this reviewer, along with Frequenty Asked Questions about IIS, ISAPI, ASP, ADO, ODBC, ATL, and ActiveX. Included with the FAQ are book reviews, how to articles and related knowledge base links at: http://www.15seconds.com/faq

well, it should be an excellent book but finally turns out to be a nightmare due to too many mistakes. Few files in the book can be used directly and mistakes could be found every page. Just a waste of time and energy.

Having read extensively on the subject (but by no means an "expert") I found this book extremely "user friendly" but really explanatory. Some things which were not as clear to me before were made explicit in this book. I highly recommend it to truth seekers.

Science and Torah confirm each other truly. As both Bertrand Russell and the old melamdim, including this Nissim Rov, inform us, the World before the World was created, well, it was a Different World. Causality and the other Laws of Physics just didn't work the way they do now. Then G-d, Boruch Hu, thought, lehavdil, how to get some regularity and entertainment into this Dead Machine? So he caused, lehavdil, the Big Bang. Since then we have had the Lights, and Shells, that scholars and mitzvahniks see, and the Moon, Sun, Oceans, Rivers, Mountains, Trees, Pretty Girls, Snowfalls etc etc etc that the rest of us see. All Khlipah, but I will stick with these Manifestations, rather than bury my face in more Books.

Frankly, all of Berg's books on Kabbalah are full of terrible translations, censored and edited texts, and horrible commentary. His "explanations" are rejected by all Jewish authorities, Orthodox and non-Orthodox, religious and academic. Berg is attempting to create a non-Jewish and for-profit version of Kabbalah, and it is just embarassing. Instead of reading his nonsense, please check out books on this subject by real authorities and good writers:

Read, for instance, "The Jewish Mystical Tradition", by Ben Zion Bokser; "Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism", by Gershom Scholem; "Zohar: Annotated & Explained" by Daniel Chanan Matt and Andrew Harvey

I would also suggest "The Wisdom of The Zohar: An Anthology of Texts", Ed. Isaiah Tishby, and translated from the Hebrew by David Goldstein.

Rav Berg takes the reader on a deeper more complex teachings of kabbalah. This book is a little more advance then his other books, but fairly easy to understand. I read the book in a day, it kept me interested and should interest you too. If you liked the information in the Movie "What the Bleep do we know" you will discover this is a kabbalic standpoint to some of the information.

Kabbalah light. My seven year old enjoys excepts. Harmless and fun for those new to Jewish mysticism.

Short, but sweet. Definitely not as in-depth as I was hoping for. It's a small book (physically) and makes for easy reading, just don't expect it to be packed with insights as you can read it in about an hour.

If you've read some of the small Kabbalah books, you know that they all say pretty much the same thing. This has some new perspectives on old material and is a quick read, but it's nothing to jump up and down about.

it is a very interesting book, ,simple to read and to underderstand andif you also buy de kabbalah book of sex you could have very useful conclusions for your way of life in this reencarneation with love and joy of being alive. Ana

THis is a great beginners book if you are looking for dive sites for all different ability divers. It gives a great little synopsis of all the dives in the area. We have been there twice and it is great!!! Very helpful book. Thanks A+

The first thing that struck me when a copy of this book arrived through my letterbox was how thin it was. As a professional underwater photo-journalist & author who specialises in shipwrecks, I am also a shipwreck historian and, therefore, well aware of the shipwrecks to be found in Bermuda. This book does not do justice to those shipwrecks at all.

Bermuda Shipwrecks is a paper-back book measuring 9" x 6" (23cm x 15 cm) containing 72 pages. With 10 of those pages taken up with such bumf as title of the book (again), fairly ordinary foreword (much of which is repeated on the back cover), acknowledgements, something about the authors, index, how to use the book (which in this case means reading it!) and how to order more copies (as if!), there is precious little room for the details for which we purchased the book in the first place.

The book's cover calls this work "A vacationing diver's guide to Bermuda's Shipwrecks" but it is not even that. Any diver operating anywhere in the world will require diving information and in a number of cases this is wholly non-existent. In others it is less than two lines.

With much of the text punctuated with Teddy did this and then Teddy did that (a reference to Teddy Tucker (who wrote the foreword)) one is left wondering why Teddy didn't do the one thing he should have done - and write the book in the first place. Doubtless it will be called "The Adventures of Teddy!"

In short, this is book of short stories about how many of Bermuda's wrecks were lost. And lost is the right word for this book when it comes to detail.

Not worth the cover price.

N M

If you are the type of diver that likes to know the background on your wreck dives then this is for you. The history behind the ships and wrecks is very well laid out. Its a good tool to have if your going to dive the wrecks in Bermuda.

I didn't like how overly complicated the language was in this book, but it has some great sample television critiques that gets you started on thinking about TV in a whole new way. The book discusses several different categories of criticism, such as genre and ideological. This book also treats TV as art, even if the average person would not. It encourages you to look beyond the surface features of a show to the underlying themes or messages being subliminally relayed to the audience. For instance, one criticism states that The X-Files "reaffirms the privileged position of science within Western culture...Faith is called into question." I highly recommend it.

The text is not very valuable. It presents the material from a condescending perspective leaving the reader with little to work with. The language is too academic to the point of being incomprehensible. There are plenty of other books which are far more valuable and aimed toward an academic audience.

This text came in very handy while writing a paper criticising a telelvision program. The samples critiques are the most helpful, but the book isn't the easist to just browse through...the reading is pretty heavy.

Unmistakably and in so many ways, Iain Borden thinks that skateboarding is RAD! This sentiment comes through in nearly every one of his 267 pages on the subject, a sort of tribute to the urban arts of skateboarding. This is scholarship as panegyric ... but don't get me wrong, I'm largely with Borden in his readings and estimation of the radical nature and content and potential of skateboarding: it's RAD!

In this monograph, Borden's archive is largely skateboarding magazines. He talks some about zines and almost none about films, and the way he reads mags is simply (and a bit disappointingly) to quote from the alphabetic portions of those texts. This is not to say that this book is not replete with images, because it is -- photos, magazine pages, more photos, including even one of Borden in a pool at a skate park! love that moment in the text -- it's just that Borden is not a discourse analyst, so he doesn't break down and close read in the ways I might have wanted him too. But dude, he sure is an architectural theorist, and so what this book is is Borden dumping piles and piles of Lefebvre onto skateboarding in order to redefine architecture and make sophisticated sense of what might otherwise be considered a "mere" hobby.

That's right: Borden more or less erects a massive half pipe of Lefebvre's work on space and the city, rhythmanalysis, bodies, and the modern city, and then skates skateboarding and the spaces/landscapes that skateboarding takes place and shape in and around in RIGHT THROUGH that theoretical halfpipe. It makes for a yummy ride, if a bit of a repetetive one -- back and forth we go for all of those 267 pages largely riding on the simulacral wave that is the half pipe made out of Lefebvre. But since I dig Lefebvre, I was into the book.

Okay, but this is what Borden SAYS in this book, and what he claims, and what he ardently works to prove. He's mainly trying to say (aside from the statement that "Skateboarding is RAD!" which comes through on every page of this book, even though it is never expressly said) is that

*** get this *** Architecture is not buildings, and objects in our cities and lives are not texts, but that architecture is a sort of result of interactions of bodies in space. So the skater in the halfpipe makes something in excess of the pipe when he (and it usually is a he, Borden concedes; hot skater dudes populate this text while skate-grrls are few) goes for an arial, or does something unexpected with his body-board continuum. Skateboarding is just one way, and a very specific one, that space in the city is made and remade and created out of interactions of the skating kind.

Okay, so that seems to be his main idea, as I repeat it with flaws of all kinds, no doubt. He begins with chapters on wheels and boards, then moves to the skateparks (less interesting) and the urban appropriation of space/architecture by rampaging skater dudes (more interesting). This is where skating is radical, unlawful, wild ... RAD! Borden does a few other funny things: like saying skating is the parole to the lange of the boring everyday, or something like that. He's all theory-crazed, looking for any way he possibly can to see skateboarding as RAD! And he does. And it works.

I guess the main limitation of this book for me, and there were few, is the lack of critique. Borden doesn't see skateboarding as being nearly as commodified and caught up on "what's cool" and even a sort of coopted critique and radicalism as I see it to be. I think it's RAD, I guess, but in ways I wished he would have explored the commodification of it more, the rage and anger and ways that skating is perhaps misplaced and thus safe aggression and critique. I wanted it to be read not so much as RAD, but as a patterning with more facets, at least a few of them LAME. Without, it becomes some kind of cure-all activity, beyond human.

This book is an informative look into Ian Bordens extensive research into the history and culture of skateboarding, which illustrates alternative issues of architecture and production of space.

The beginning chapters are heavy reading and heavily referenced, but worth the time and effort. The later chapters go into an in depth and detailed look at skateboarding development and cultural issues.

He challenges readers to change their perception of architecture and spaces, and to look at how our own actions affect the space we occupy, by looking at skateboarding and its culture. He references Lefebvre who said, "Surely it is the supreme illusion to defer to architects, urbanists or planners as being experts or ultimate authorities in matters relation to space." He then goes on to talk about how the interaction addresses the physical architecture, yet responds with a dynamic presence not another physical object. Skateboarding produces space, but also time and the self. This book addresses how, architecture as a set of flows, as a set of experience and reproductions, can be embedded in the practices of architectural history - for as architecture is not itself a space, but only a way of looking at space. The rest of the book is a thoroughly researched look at skateboarding.

Its worthwhile noting that his is not a skateboarding magazine and is written in the academic tongue so is not easy to read. But worthwhile reading if you are interested in this field.

Yes, I said it, and I stand behind it. I really had my hopes up for this one. There is so much that can be done, the title alone suggests creativity utilizing the imagination. Does it deliver? No. The book, wich I expected to be full of photography and articles showing how skateboarders use the surrounding architecture for creativity, is really just a sad piece that goes on to tell the history of skateboarding, with very little interesting photography at all. The written content itself is hard to keep your interest, even for a long time skateboarder as myself. Dont get me wrong, I am all for the history of skateboarding, hell, I lived most of it. But that should be and has been put in books and editorials that were labled as such. This was, as I said, a disapointment. I can only hope that someone will see this and spark the idea to do it right, unless I do it first that is.