Bertha Books

This book is brilliant! Cummings weaves a haunting and mesmeric spell. What astonishes me is how all the poems, though they come from different personae, are one piece, one texture--of earth and animal, field and fur, radiant dream and the chemical in a developing vat--woven from the fragments of almost otherworldly human lives. These poems, with their occasional surreal imagery and startling metaphors, transport me wholly into an alternate reality--another kind of rabbit hole. Time, loss, life, death--these permeate, but always tied to the particular feminine sensibility, the various faces of Alice as woman and artist. Cummings pulls me totally into Alice's world.

I believe the book to be of great help to anyone who wishes to learn the Creek language. So far it has helped me with my pronunciations and verb congugations.

Beowulf is a tale of glory, courage and death. It starts with a burial at sea, on a boat forever roaming the ocean with a rich hoard of gold and it ends with the pyre of Beowulf himself buried with a rich hoard in a mound to remember the dead king and to be a signal to all sailors about the land they will welcome as a harbour of peace. But the whole trajectory of this tale is founded on three exploits, three killings of monsters. First Grendel the sea monster who is destroyed with sheer muscular strength. Then Grendel's mother at the bottom of the sea in a lair that looks like a womb that has to be purified by the killing and beheading of both the mother and the son, a son that has no father and that is the last descendant of the outcast Cain. It is the perfect Christian rewriting of an old saga, the destruction of all monsters, of the last monsters bringing the end of Cain's line and the redemption of humanity in God by the cleansing of the womb that produced such monsters. It is the killing of the mother that had no husband and her son that had no father, of those unhuman beings that live on preying humanity. All the old legends are thus christianized and Beowulf, the hero, some would have seen a god in him in the old days, becomes a Christian hero who cleanses the womb and christianizes it, who brings the light of God to the world along with glory and peace. But the chistianization of the saga is only complete when a third killing takes place, a killing that will mean the death and sacrifice of the hero. The third monster is a serpent, a dragon, keeping a fantastic treasure under his guard. The monster of flight, fire and also water, the cross of all monsters of water, air and fire, living in a deep burrow in the earth. He associates the four elements and has to be killed for humanity to be free of such menaces. Beowulf will do it though he will die of it. It is the killing of the dragon in the Book of Revelation that opens the road to the New Jerusalem, the City of God. This dragon is also an obvious father symbol. Hence all the monsters are destroyed, and the victory is complete by the killing of the father, though that killing both means the death of the hero and the birth of a new hero who helps Beowulf defeat the dragon. The treasure of the dragon will yet not be appropriated by the winner because it represents the strength of this dragon, of the father, of the hero. The hero will be buried with it and the tomb will become a beaconing symbol of security and welcome for men. This christianization is very subtle. Eight warriors will enter the dragon's lair, eight like Jesus Christ in christian symbolism, but also like the omega of the Book of Revelation. And then twelve warriors will consecrate the burial mound of Beowulf, twelve like the twelve doors of the New Jerusalem, like the representatives of the City of God, of the prediction of the end of the world and the redemption of all worthy men and women after the last call of God who is both the alpha, the beginning, and the omega, the end, of life, of the world, of humanity, of any man's life that has to start with a heroic act and end with another.

The language itself makes it difficult to read but the effort is leading to a worthwhile beauty that no translation can ever achieve.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Review by Jo Ann Callis

Bertha Alyce is a book about a daughter/photographer's career-long intense
struggle, through photographs and video, to reconcile her relationship with
her mother. Photographing Bertha Alyce from 1973 until her death in 1991,
Gay Block has given us a book that is ultimately about redemption and
forgiveness.
This book is so rich that it makes one want to drink it in and hold on
for awhile. It is deep, troubling, and intensely human. The role of the

photographer is touching throughout: all the characters are portrayed with
compassion and identification. Myriad issues are touched on: of beauty,
desire, and class; of feminism and of women's need to be pleasing; of power
and domination; of face-lifts and strokes and whose breasts are prettier; of
women's rivalry; of mother-daughter rivalry; of the control ideology and
culture has over us. Block deals with all these issues with grace and tact.
This book is funny, like Jewish humor, often painfully so. I'm amazed that
it is all integrated without bludgeoning. Often I had to stop and look
closely to know what what Block was doing because everything is not obvious:
as a reader I was asked to make leaps which left me room to feel my own
experiences in intimate relationships.
When I say reader I'm not inferring the text is more than the pictures
because this is a book of photographs that are to be read. It is a
brilliantly laid-out, beautifully designed picture book with the text so
crucially, carefully integrated.
Both essays, by Eugenia Parry and Kathleen Howe's essays are valuable
and enrich the book.

Bertha von Suttner, heute den meisten nur noch dem Namen nach bekannt (evtl. auch noch von der österreichischen Zwei-Euro-Münze), war Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts eine der weltweit bekanntesten Frauen - verdienstvoll, mutig, und deswegen entweder geliebt oder verleumdet.
Brigitte Hamann zeichnet hier B. v. Suttners mitunter recht abenteuerliches Leben nach, das alles andere als geradlinig verlaufen war: Die Jugend der Comtesse Kinsky im kaiserlichen Wien und der gesellschaftliche Abstieg der Familie, die Begegnung mit Alfred Nobel, den sie später zur Stiftung des Friedensnobelpreises anregen sollte, die Jahre im Kaukasus, das Eintreten für Frauenrechte und die Entwicklung zur weltberühmten Pazifistin, schließlich ihr unermüdliches Engagement für den Frieden, den sie, klarsichtig wie nur wenige andere ihrer Zeitgenossen, in großer Gefahr sah - sie war die erste Frau, der der Friedensnobelpreis verliehen wurde.
Brigitte Hamann wäre nicht Brigitte Hamann, wenn diese Biographie nicht weit über das hinausginge, was man gewöhnlich von Biographien erwartet: Sie geht ausführlich auf historische und gesellschaftliche Hintergründe ein, und viele der benutzten Quellen wurden erstmalig ausgewertet. Vermutlich sind Fakten, die nicht in diesem Buch enthalten sind, auch nicht der Rede wert...
Diese über 500 Seiten starke Biographie ist fesselnd geschrieben, unter Verwendung vieler einprägsamer Zitate. Gleichzeitig wahrt Hamann freundliche Distanz zu ihrem Thema und stellt Bertha von Suttner nicht als Heilige dar, sondern als eine engagierte Frau, die manchmal in den Widersprüchen ihrer Zeit gefangen war - die aber viel öfter diese Widersprüche, ja die ganze Epoche durchschaute.
Man wünscht der gegenwärtigen Weltpolitik viele Bertha von Suttners. Und diesem Buch viele, viele Leser.

Bertha von Suttner is little known in the United States. Despite the fact she won the Nobel Peace Prize - and was the first woman - she is often overlooked. This book helps to inform those who read it about how she was instrumental in having the Nobel Peace Prize created.

Born into Austrian nobility, Bertha von Suttner saw firsthand the military buildup in Europe during the decades preceding World War I. She and her husband, Baron Arthur von Suttner, worked tirelessly for the cause of peace in Europe. Her close friendship with the inventor Alfred Nobel helped to establish a strong structure to the peace movement, with the annual awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize.

This book is an excellent reference to Baroness Bertha von Suttner's life. Syracuse University did our society a great service in publishing the book in English.

This is another impressive books on the german ww2 big mortar Gerat series. Complete with history and pack with photos. There is an original drawing of the front and left side of the Munitionsschlepper IV. Good for german ww2 weapon fan and modeller.
Recommended.

my mom has read this book, she would very much like for me to read it because she believes its one of the best books she has read to depict the capacity a womwan has to forgive generally and for a woman to be wronged and not able to forgive as it is explained in the book must be beyond pardon

Wow - could not put this book down! Having been thru several hurricanes I found this to be realistic, chilling, believable and humorous all in one! After living on Water Island and experiencing the island life I would definitly recommend this to any adult!

This is my favorite from childhood. Wonderful illustrations by Eloise Wilkin depicting idyllic childhood days through the seasons. Also a good first reader.