Blake Books

An outstanding history of hockey in Fort Wayne, and a wonderful read. Author Blake Sebring nails the history of the third oldest franchise in Minor-League hockey with a series of entertaining five to ten paragraph tales. He hits on life in the old International Hockey League, squaring off with opponents like Muskegon and Toledo. He touches on life after coast-to-coast expansion and the demise of the old league. He captures stories from life in today's United Hockey League. Throughout, he spins stories that perfectly describe what fans love about hockey.


Sebring focuses on the names and faces that populate the game, and never forgets to toss in the irrelevant gem (Did you know the Komets are 10-0 in games where the San Diego Chicken made an appearance?) that truly makes this book indispensable for the fan of minor league sports.

Reading the names in the Dedication and scanning the Chapter names, I knew I was in for a treat. Paging through the Record Book and the season by season stats, I knew I had a keepsake. This is the way a history should be compiled!

Pick up a copy. You won't regret it.

You give me one thousand words to write a review for this book - apart from the words I have already tapped in I just need one to describe this remarkable work....

BRILLIANT

After reading the first chapter, I was taken in by the sophistication of this work. It is very deep, and the reader should choose a quiet place with pencil and paper in hand.

One of the most important goals of this work is to establish that modern philosophers (e.g., poststructuralists) did not mean that Ethics are relative - thus values education is not dead yet.

PJO

What is the spirit of place?

In this rich & fascinating volume, Peter Woodcock takes us on a brief but illuminating tour of Albion, as expressed by artists, poets, novelists, filmmakers, and dreamers & prophets. Beginning with the genius of William Blake, he introduces us to successive generations of painters & artists, many of whom were new to me, each of whom offered a distinct & mythic vision of England. He reaches from such luminous films as "A Canterbury Tale" & "Great Expectations" in the 1940s, to the challenging films of Derek Jarman in the 1980s. He explores the primal landscapes & mysteries of Arthur Machen, the mystical psyche & poetic prose of John Cowper Powys in "A Glastonbury Romance" & "Wolf Solent," the landscape of ley lines & legend mapped by John Michell.

Connecting everything is the shimmering thread of the Neo-Romantic Vision, sometimes golden, sometimes steeped in darkness, which could also be found in the work of such musicians as Nick Drake, and the great English Romantics. It's a vision of deeper meaning, of art as spiritual revelation. And it's a vision of life as something whole, greater than the sum of its parts, offering purpose & transcendent awakening to a populace battered by brute political power, insatiable materialism, and merciless alienation.

This is not the utilitarian, reductionist worldview of the technocratic state. Nor is it the psychological & spiritual straitjacket of the fundamentalist. It's a view of Being as Possibility, as Growth, as Wholeness. And for that very reason, of course, it's a threat to any authoritarian mind. All the more reason & necessity for its pursuit!

Here you'll find an excellent starting point for exploration of your own. Any of the creative artists referenced in these pages is well worth investigating in depth. Highly recommended!

befor you buy this book make sure you can read spanish, the
reson I gave it 5 stars is because I'm sure it is good even if I can not read it.

From the first page this book about Jessica and Rafael is spell-binding. The flavor and atmosphere of New Orleans and Rio Janiero combined is enough to set the pages on fire. The mystery added to the passion made Jennifer Blake one of my favorite authors.

This book is an outstanding work of fiction by a young and talented author. I found Warner's book to be full of fresh ideas and thoughtful observations about nature and humanity. Inside the pages of his book, Warner has created a fascinating world in which likable characters test the limits of the human experience. At times humorous, the narrator weaves in and out of the story and becomes an additional character who communicates directly to the reader. It was delightful to read a novel unlike any I have read before (this coming from a librarian!). Tragedy of a Modern Hero is a must have for all libraries, whether academic or domestic.

This book covers about the last ten years of Blake's creative life as a poet and as an artist, but especially as an artist. Blake is definitely not known as much as Coleridge, Byron or Wordsworth, and yet he is at least as great as anyone of these. This book is a welcome publication. I will regret that all the illustrations discussed in the book are not reproduced, at least in black and white. To follow the discourse we have to know Blake's works or to have all the works we can next to us to check references and quotations. Unluckily we cannot have all the engravings, etchings, watercolours, paintings and drawings, which should be a necessary requirement. Another remark is necessary before speaking of the content : you need to have next to you at least three editions of the Bible : the Authorized Version (King James's version), a modern version of this standard translation, and a good edition of the Jerusalem Bible with extensive notes, not to mention the aprocrypha and pseudepigrapha of the Old testament, particularly, and the New Testament, marginally. And in this field of religion you willhave to have a fair and deep knowledge of religion from Adam to the 19th century, arts from the ancient classics to the 19th century and particularly religious art from the 10th century to the 19th century. Those are the prerequired competences you need to satisfy if you want to enjoy the richness of the book. The book is excellent because it takes Blake's works in their choronology, and yet in both retrospective and prospective perspective, sending you back to previous works and forwards to later works. It also puts Blake in perspective with many other artists : Dürer, and many other engravers of Blake's past and his present, the Greek and Latin writers and poets, Milton, and all the poets of his generation and time. This raises a question about the wide interest of poets in that period for Cain, Abel, Enoch, and some other biblical episodesn among others the Apocalypse. This should be put in perspective with the religious radicals and dissenters of the 17th century : there is a link with them that is not explored (just mentioned once). But the author has an original method. He looks at the works that blend or mix illustrations and text as a spatial whole, each element being positioned in the space of the sheet or book with a meaningful intention : he is a modern structuralist though also post-modern in a way because he does not consider the structure as the only meaningful approach. But he does not catch one essential characteristic of Blake's, or at least not enough : Blake was a visual imagination and the lay-out of his pages is absolutely significant and has to be seen in three dimensions, if not four due to the texts integrated in or associated with the illustrations. At the same time Blake was more traditionally a symbolist and particularly a symbolist of numbers in the fundamental biblical, christian and romanesque tradition. The author should have explored this numerical symbolism more and crossed it with the visual element. That would have given a third dimension to his approach that remains rather two-dimensional. Some of his conclusions may have been changed particularly his easy conclusion that Blake was delving into antisemiticism (p. 200) and anti-femininism (p. 264). This would be completely reoriented towards a reevaluation of the Jews and women in the Christian tradition. For Blake Jesus was the (Jewish) Messiah because he dared implement the basic principle of the Jews : go beyond rules and follow the Spirit in your inspiration, against the Thora-founded political and religious institutions of Israel. As for women, God made a mistake by creating man and woman unequally, man from the feminine earth (hence producing an ambiguous being) and the woman from one of the man's ribs (hence producing another ambiguous being) instead of having created them like all other elements in the world from his Spirit. Hence women are not at fault. God is. Blake's vision hence is to liberate humanity of the God of the earth, but it is impossible due to God's very creative process. Hence humanity is doomed to remain in the hands of the God of the earth (Satan) in spite of his longing and striving for the Spirit, the real God that should not have made a mistake, and yet he did, didn't he ? A brilliant book that raises so many questions.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

The U.S.-Mexico border has proven immune to most forms of modernization. Therefore leaving the rugged Chihuahua/Sonoran desert with literally thousands of scarcely inhabited miles, and it becomes difficult to say which is more colorful, the people or the desert sunsets; And we find the Spanish names have become nearly as beautiful as the photographs. Fortunately, this work is more than just a picture book. It is filled with in depth essays covering everything from chino grass and millipedes, to the last Mexican Wolves - and the people who made the region what it is today. This book is very 'real'. There is no feeling of being in a dream world. The magnificent photos are imaginative, but not exotic. No phony filtering or heavily staged shots. (The surreal beauty stands easily on its own merits, and the photographer obviously understands this.) I give this book a '9' rating because it will not work as a casual [coffee table] book. Any visitor who takes a peek will certainly melt into it, leavin

I was introduced to this picture book in my Children's Literature class. The illustrations are vivid and thought provoking. This book is a beautiful extension of William Blake's classic poem and I reccommend it for children of all ages.