Brian Books

Beyond Success is uplifting, motivating and full of common sense. In this age of corruption, me-firstism and none trust of the unknown and unusual, the book offers some relief from from these life spoiling realities. It offers good advice and is well worth reading.

This easy to read, wonderful book, that makes you think. It's great at helping you find out(or figue out), what YOU really want out of your life. This is a joy to read and I think everyone will love it. Buy some extras for friends & family(I did). Life is too short. It is possible to have more abundance in your life.

Biro is a wonderfully inspiring author. Beyond Success is a joy to read. It's motivational, sweet, and just a wonderful experiance. I give it two thumbs way, way up!

Brian Ferneyhough is seen by many as the face of the so-called "New Complexity" movement. It is important that one set aside any judgments on this aesthetic style before reading. This collection features a wide range of essays, interviews, analyses, and a nice list of compositions and a discography.

Initially, I wasn't sure what I thought about Ferneyhough. Certainly, as a student of musicology, I was fascinated by his amazingly dense scores - scores that qualify as art in their own right. However, as a musician, I'm not sure that taking the time to actually learn a Ferneyhough work - and learn it well - would be personally worth the effort. That said, reading a selection of these writings helped me understand and appreciate Ferneyhough in a new way. I found the studies of his own works helped me appreciate the musical ideas to a greater extent that was previously possible through my own brief analysis.

After reading a number of the essays this much is clear: Brian Ferneyhough is definitely an intellectual. Whether he is an artist also is up to you. I'm not totally sold on his (perhaps overly) cerebral aesthetics, but I found his writing to be enlightening, not just for his music, but for much late 20th century music. If you're reading this review, you're probably already aware of Ferneyhough's style. If you are fascinated by his originality or difficulty, this will be a rewarding read.

Contemporary Music Studies, Harwood Academic Publishers have done an admirable job in publishing annual seminal works from a wide spectrum of contemporary musical thought,showing no proclivities. From Eisler, Peter Schat,,Bruno Maderna, Pierre Boulez and neglected Charles Koechlin. Here Ferneyhough brings us right to his writing desk and we learn how he constructs his multi-dimensional musical concoctions. Much of it has been material provided elsewhere,but who reads it or can recall its source,from program notes and seminal interviews with Paul Griffiths, James Boros and Richard Toop, those who have followed Mr. Ferneyhough's career, and were there at the birth. Well documented here are the four string Quartet. And since the quartet is, or has been considered as special creative preserve, Ferneyhough's thought is well focused, giving us, rendering his aesthetic battle-plans for each. Some like the Third Quartet was more lucid and facile,greater surface discourse relatively speaking. There are also grist kinds of analysis, of Webern, token objects on the way toward discovery,but analysis frequently point toward the labyrinth of creativity What you value one place is sought after in another. We also extend into a life beyond just placing musical loci, notes on paper, Walter Benjamin is a great inspiration, and Ferneyhough has followed the intellectual currents of Europe, philosophic, and cultural to be able to place his creations within that discourse. He frequently solicits the visual world of painting for an agenda.Also Musical excerpts abound the pages , and the impeccable draftsmanship is a sensuous pleasure a gaze almost pornographic in its seductiveness.

Ferneyhough's writings are on music are some of the most rich and fascinating ever. This collection, which consists of articles, lectures, analysi, and interviews [which are exquisite!] give us insight into the views of a profound living composer -- with wonderful little brain tingles along the way! It's a shame that the book costs so much [check local university libraries], but I encourage people to get it any way they can. I cannot say enough about the integrity of these writings. . .

Brian is so excited when his parents buy him a pet bird. Everyone is amazed when he teaches it how to talk. When his pesky big brother leaves the door open though, the bird flies out. While Brian's visual impairment plays a big part in the action of the story, it certainly isn't the focus of this charming book. This book acts as a great way to introduce children to diversity.

I purchased this book for my six year old nephew who is blind and a bird lover. This book is incredible! The illustrations are wonderful and the story focuses on family togetherness, not just blindness. It is a wonderful book for siblings with differences, any child really.

Brian's Bird is a wonderfully written and beautifully illustrated picture book. Author Patricia Davis tells a simple direct story while creating many opportunities for visual images. Layne Johnson's striking and colorful photo-like pictures jump to life off the page.

This story of a blind boy who delights in his new pet parakeet is ideal for young readers. The book treats Brian's blindness in a positive manner. The scene in which he uses his sense of touch to solve the mystery of his birthday present gives young readers the opportunity to gain understanding of the special skills of a blind person. The description of how the bird's feet feel on Brian's finger is delightful.

Brian exhibits patience and persistence in teaching his bird. There is humor in the story, as when Brian hears someone calling his name, only to realize it is the bird. Once again, the author highlights the use of an alternate sense.

Brian's brother presents challenges for Brian from the opening pages of the book. Indeed, his brother's actions lead to the bird's flight from the house. The boys work together to solve the problem and sibling teamwork wins the day.

The book presents many opportunities for an adult reading this story to a young child to discuss a variety of issues. The book is also appropriate for young readers up to age 8 or 9 to read on their own.

Grew up in the bridge-destroying decade for this section of Brooklyn --1950-70s. This is a good representation of what I remember and what we all should remember.

This journey by text and antique photos of Bay Ridge and Fort Hamilton is a must read and a must own for those of us who lived the good life on these pleasant streets. Gone forever but still alive in our memories are the Staten Island Ferry and some of the small movie theatres that represented escape from the hot summers of the inner city. The majestic mansions that dotted Shore Road are gone but their replacements, though slightly less opulent, retain the gentile grandeur of the area. Fort Hamilton High School and Public School 102 remain as they were still serving thousands of Bay Ridge children. Send this book to anyone you know who grew up in Bay Ridge. They will thank you for this delightful trip back in time.

This book is amazing. If you or anyone you know is from Bay Ridge get this book. I have recently moved out of Bay Ridge, but this book makes me want to go back. To see the changes that the neighborhood has gone through it incredible. This is a must have for your personal library.

Cahiers: Notebooks (Volume 3) by Paul Valéry, chief editor and translations by Brian Stimpson, translations by (Peter Lang) This volume explores the parameters of mind in its affective and intellectual limits. As always Valéry circles against the common drift seeking a personal and sometimes downright idiosyncratic basis for experience as his own. As in the previous two volumes this is the best representation of his notebooks in English.
The present volume takes forward the investigation into the nature of intellec­tual and affective being which is introduced in volume 1 of Valéry's Cahiers/ Notebooks, and the exploration of the different dimensions and expressions of thought and creativity in volume 2. It is perhaps not surprising that an enterprise devoted to examining the functioning of the human mind in all its aspects, should concern itself so specifically and so comprehensively with the different facets of 'Psychology' as are grouped together in the present volume. What is rather more astonishing is to note, firstly, the full extent and range of Valéry's enquiries, which were begun, if not in a total vacuum of knowledge, certainly at a time when psychology was in its infancy as a human science; and secondly, that even as the subject evolved rapidly throughout the early part of the twentieth century, Valéry's approach remains rigorously personal, at times even, for certain readers, idiosyncratic, but always radically alternative in its determination to chal­lenge received wisdom.
Many of the notes reveal extensive readings on the subject and a close famil­iarity with the scientific journals of his day. It was perhaps inevitable that as the 'sciences of the mind' developed, they would adopt the methodologies of the pure sciences of the time, establishing their credentials through the specialism of focus. But always one encounters in Valéry's notes his determination to bring his own 'way of looking at problems, seeking to move the questions on to a higher level of integrated, systemic analysis. Nowadays we might be tempted to call his approach holistic, such is the insistence upon the living system as a complex whole, composed of many separate but interrelated factors -- some of which we are aware of, some of which have an autonomous function, unbeknown to us, but ever in the background -- all of which are constantly responding to their mi­lieu.
To read these passages is not only to be presented with a challenge to the orthodoxies of Valéry's own times, but to be brought up against some myths surrounding Valéry himself, which have tended to see him as irrevocably assert­ing the power of ratiocination, of mind over body, of intellect over emotion. In fact, analysis of the functioning of the mind encompasses conscious and uncon­scious responses alike; his recognition of the power of the imagination to pro­voke deeply visceral reactions leads him to interrogate the very nature of mental images; his fascination with dreams and dreaming is explored in parallel to the different approaches of Surrealism or Psychoanalysis. And while Descartes barely figures in these pages (unlike the scientific chapters in volume 4 and PHILO­SOPHY in volume 5), there is underlying all the ideas, a constant interrogation and rebuttal of Cartesian dualism. The understanding of the mind is seen as in­dissolubly linked to a deepening reflection upon the self's sensory and emotional responses both in the lived present and in the past-made-present that is memory, each of these reactions in turn rooted in the experiential encounter with the world around. Hence the profound significance of Valéry's triad: Corps-Esprit-­Monde, or CEM, representing the multi-faceted connections of Body-Mind­-World.
The first chapter PSYCHOLOGY, aims to analyse the nature of mind in terms of a theory of the operations it performs; Valéry describes it as a pattern of in­terlocking mechanisms that is constant and independent of its application and he frequently expresses this in terms of mathematical analogies: it is a geometry with no reference to particular events, or an algebra in which the particular values of x and y are subordinate to the established relations between x and y. SOMA AND CEM is concerned with the interaction of the mind and the body both with each other and with the context of the surrounding world in which they function; taken together they are the 'three cardinal points of knowledge', the 'three at­tributes or dimensions of sensibility'. ATTENTION considers the active process involved in the focusing of consciousness upon a particular phenomenon, a pro­cess which is seen by Valéry as a higher form of accommodation and coordin­ation. SENSIBILITY examines the role of the senses and the feelings in the recep­tion and decoding of impressions received from the physical world, which in­cludes the internal world of the body. MEMORY introduces the element of time, and here Valéry looks at the relation between past and present experiences and at the respective roles of mind and sense in the creation and assimilation of memories. Finally, DREAM examines the nature of mental activity in sleep, in the waking state, as well as in the crucial intermediate states of transition from one to the other.
Despite the differences of emphasis that these distinct fields of enquiry repre­sent, a certain underlying current permeates all the chapters and most clearly, perhaps, in the chapter DREAM. In his examination of the interaction of mind and sensibility, inner and outer worlds, Valéry's language frequently reveals a vi­sion of that interaction as more akin to a battle than a partnership. In that battle, although everything is staked on the victory of the mind, which is essentially the victory of the Self, he is obliged to confront the limits of that power and the full force of other factors and constraints, including of course, the unconscious ('This business of the unconscious really needs to be sorted out' he writes in PSYCH­OLOGY). What emerges, above all, is Valéry's sustained attempt to delineate the structures and movements of consciousness as an integral process that functions independently of the objects of consciousness. Each of the areas represented by the chapters in this volume serves as an opportunity to explore the limits of this activity, either as a particularizing feature, as with ATTENTION or MEMORY, or by contradistinction, as is the case with DREAM.
The extent to which these features are interrelated is most evident in the notes dating from the early 1900s which are to be found both in the manuscript Cahiers and in various parallel thematic dossiers and loose-leaf pages: among them, notes for a 'Mémoire sur l'Attention', a notebook entitled 'Somnia', dos­siers of notes titled 'Rêve', 'Surprise-Attente' and so on. The overall coherence of the research is very clear, not least through the circulation of passages between the different material forms, sometimes recopied by hand or on the typewriter, sometimes with variants or entirely new developments, but also through the hesitations over how to group the notes at the time of writing and later when Valéry was attempting to classify them.2 The notes in 'Somnia' for example (C, IV, 491-585) written between 1911 and 1914, are located here almost entirely in the chapter DREAM. They show that Valéry's prime concern is to determine, by means of discrimination between different states of awareness, the mental pro­cesses at work in the waking state, and thereby define the different phases of consciousness. The movement from one state to another is particularly fertile in enabling him to identify the overlap between the two systems of sleep and wakefulness. He is struck by the immediacy of experience in dreams: 'Modifica­tions of the kind that constitute and people dreams are produced without prepar­ation. What happens, happens without any links having to be established.' There is, in other words, no mediating conceptual superstructure, rather an im­mediate identification between the perceiving subject and the object of perception.
Questions of language are of crucial importance in this volume. For while the attempt to redefine terms in a language freed from arbitrary associations and cap­able of expressing pure analytical functions is a central part of the original pro­ject or 'System', Valéry encounters ultimate barriers of meaning when dealing with dreaming and sleep. What language can be used to define phenomena which, by definition, are beyond the realm of the referential system of language? When language is based on an arbitrary association of signifier and signified -- a notion that Valéry acknowledged long before Saussure's teachings became widely disseminated --, how can this be applied to dreams where 'there are no signs properly speaking' because there is no distinction between the sign and the meaning? Any attempt to speak about dreams or to describe sleep can only be realized by means of a translation into another language of a different order; but 'translation into the language of waking life necessarily destroys the true phenom­enological nature of the dream -- (like poetry translated into prose)'. It is, further­more, an aspect that Valéry constantly evokes to distinguish his own approach from that of Freud: 'These theories of Freud's are based on narratives told by one awake person to another. -- There's no way of checking them.' Nevertheless, as Malcolm Bowie has pointed out, Valéry is less distant from Freud than he ap­pears to acknowledge, in so far as both ultimately recognize the non-translatability of the unconscious. But where Freud held that the movements and urges of the unconscious might be grasped through the paradoxes, tensions and slips of language, and the Surrealists, that it might be glimpsed through the play of ludic contradictions, Valéry focuses insistently upon the impossibility of finding an adequate language and how that impossibility can, in itself, serve to define the way that consciousness itself proceeds. To define the limits and constraints of language, is to identify and separate out those features and processes of thinking and being that, however inextricably entwined with language they have become, are nevertheless distinct from it. Language, then, is one part of the problem; the other, is that of point of view; for, in dreams the observer is directly involved with what is being observed, and the phenomenon of observing itself has a direct and immediate influence.
However, rather than seeking to circumvent these difficulties by imposing some metadiscourse which might encompass these differences, Valéry's ap­proach is to incorporate this problematic into the enquiry, with the result that the writing shows an insistent refusal to synthesize, preferring instead to employ a system of definitions by negation. He thus identifies a series of contrasts and continuities between the states of dreaming and of wakefulness. In the waking state the self is confronted with doubts, surprises and questions, ('Robinson --stock-still before the print of a human foot in the sand... Who, when, where and how? What savage has passed along this shore?'), but in dreams such experiences are directly absorbed, for there is not the distance that permits the space of dual­ity. The waking state is characterized by constraints, anticipations, expectations, classifications, discriminations, while in dream no such perspectives arise: 'In dreams, there is no cancellation, no erasure of a part of our perceptions [...]. Nothing insignificant or trivial'. There is no room for intellectual distance or objection: 'Dream integrates -- What sleeps is negation.' Underpinning the analysis is the notion that the perception of reality is based upon a distancing effect and the dualism of consciousness, whereas in dream it is impossible to identify a clear distinction between the 'I' and the 'not-I', to the extent that nothing in dream is not-real, nothing is imaginary: 'So, law of the dream: Image and reality are the same thing.' If anything, dream implies a kind of intensification of the sense of the real; hence the oft-repeated formula 'in dreams everything is dreamed': the moment one is able to say that something is a dream, one is no longer dreaming. It is striking that, despite Valéry's overt mistrust of Surrealism, he is developing such ideas for himself some 13 years before the publication of the Manifeste du Surréaalisme.
Valéry's analysis does not, however, focus exclusively upon the distinction between waking and dream, and the presence or absence of a discriminating consciousness. Rather, he is interested in this aspect for what it might show about the way the living system works, which may be identified all the more clearly when it is working differently. He seeks to determine the nature of the network of forces in operation in a human being located in his own personal, intellectual and sensory space. He analyses the functions, the systems of accom­modation, the reflexes, the established and developing links, that keep the ma­chine of the thinking-body running: if the body is a living organism, then so too are the mind and the senses, which do not require us to be constantly aware of them. Indeed the idea of forgetting as a necessary feature of the human being's capacity to function is a recurrent theme: memory and forgetting are to be seen less as opposites and more as mutually dependent operations.
It is, in fact, Valéry's efforts to categorize the series of operations that underlie mental states that most distinguishes his psychology as 'something quite different from "Freudianism"', a feature acknowledged by Jacques Lacan who made refer­ence to Valéry on many occasions in his 'Seminars'5. Lacan was pursuing his studies in psychiatry and psychoanalysis at the same time as Julien Rouart, a cousin of Madame Valéry, and they would both visit Valéry in the rue de Ville-just to speak with him about the current state of psychiatry. When in 1932 Lacan completed his doctoral thesis, On Paranoiac Psychosis in its Relations to the Personal­ity, he presented a copy of the work to Valéry inscribed with the dedication: 'To Paul Valéry. To the master who initiated our youth into the dazzling play of the laws immanent within consciousness, I dedicate this too weighty attempt to rediscover them in the most irrational regions of the mind, with respectful apologies / Jacques Lacan / 25 Oct. 32.
PSYCHOLOGY
The notes gathered together in the chapter PSYCHOLOGY reveal not only the full extent and persistence of Valéry's reflections on the subject, but also a deter­mination to underline the specificity of his contribution to the subject. Some­thing very personal emerges in the affirmation of what he calls 'My psychology' or a 'true theory of consciousness', as well as in his frequent challenges to the ap­proaches of established psychologists. Valéry's ambitious programme seeks to map out an agenda for analysis that might lead to an overall theory of consciousness: 'Psychology. I don't know whether anyone has addressed the problem of psychology in the way I do. / I ask where you want to take it. What degree of precision is demanded. Whether language, whether even any language, is ade­quate?' Valéry himself uses categories that he recognizes to be part of the 'old vo­cabulary', such as 'Memory', 'Attention', 'Will', 'Sensation', 'Perception' -- all common features of the scientific discourse of the late nineteenth century -- but at the same time he strongly rejects the notion of separate faculties and seeks to distance himself from past approaches which have tended to treat such phenom­ena as discrete categories which can be subjected to exhaustive explanation or tackled according to a positivist analysis of cause and effect. He wants, instead, firstly to envisage these states as irretrievably interrelated, and secondly, to ob­serve them in operation, and he does this by bringing new analytical frames to bear upon them in a language adapted from mathematics and thermodynamics.
Valéry's rigorous self-observation is directed towards identifying mental processes in actu, in order to build up the elements of a phenomenology of the patterns of consciousness, to a degree that is more generalized than any of the particular in­stances of its manifestation: 'Crucial question in my psychology. What is con­served through all states? what is conserved in sleep, in dreams, in drunkenness, in terror, in the fervour of love? in madness?'
As the early hopes of formulating his integrated System receded -- the founding ambition of 1892 to formulate a single, overarching model of mental functioning, a systematized algebra of the mind generating a set of universal principles -- so, over the first decade of the twentieth century, the aspiration to establish a unique set of analytical tools based upon his own method and way of looking became all the more prominent. And 'My Psychology' clearly indicated a way forward: certain formalizing, integrative approaches are maintained while the material and processes become rooted in the experience of the perceiving self, viewed as a complex set of interrelated mechanisms.
Thought is envisaged as essentially unstable, in constant flux and transformation. It is subject to the effects of associations, instincts, affectivity, attention etc. It is at once constrained by all the conditions that have formed it, whether back­ground, learning, social and cultural influences, and yet remains boundlessly free and capable of infinite inventiveness. Cognitive approaches to the nature of thought conventionally identify features such as recall, association, understand­ing, second-level awareness etc., and attempt to analyse the particular character­istics of each. Valéry, on the other hand, attempts a broader, more far-reaching approach, arguing that each of these aspects of thought operates through a series of connections and substitutions which are governed by functional rules. What are the unifying principles underpinning the multiplicity of experiences? Such is the founding question that he never loses sight of: 'The mind sees only one thing at a time -- it operates by only one operation at a time... What is the unity of its operation or of its object? It's not a question of discovering it, but of inventing it.'
The question is approached in two ways: one by a process of abstraction in treating the object, the other through a series of mutually related antithetical concepts. Firstly, he argues, the substitutions and connections operate not upon the thing itself but upon mental images which are a kind of abstract construct or symbol standing in place of the object, and this process provides 'data' in a form that enables the mind to operate upon it. Valéry frequently explores questions relating to the processes of conceptualization in terms of the images that are formed in the mind and, in particular, uses the key word 'représentation' to de­note this, a term that signifies not only how something is represented but the picture of it created in the mind both as specific image and as concept. The pro­cesses themselves are analysed in terms of dynamic opposites, and here we en­counter a vocabulary which is characteristically Valéryan: continuity / discon­tinuity, rational / irrational relations, simultaneous / successive, heterogeneous / homogeneous. Each of the pairs implies the other and this approach enables Valéry to proceed with the analyses through a process of discrimination.
The ambition to theorize the workings of consciousness remains a driving feature of Valéry's analysis, but these are never synthesized into an integrated system. Rather, he explores different theoretical models that enable him to re­examine his fundamental questions from a variety of perspectives. We can ob­serve instances of this throughout the Notebooks: from the early 'Sketch of the theory of operations', to a theory of energy, a theory of reflexes, a theory of interventions, a theory of the machine, a 'Nervous theory', a return in 1927 to 'my old theory of the instrument' and, especially in the latter years, an insistence upon the value of his early theory of phases which addresses issues of continuity, discontinuity and the transition from one to another. Models adopted from mathematics and physics are explored through the notion of geodesics and the application of quantum theory. The conditions of visual perception become an important model for providing an account of consciousness, in so far as they imply complex processes of accommodation, awareness, but also crucially, non-awareness. 'The perfect product of vision,' he writes 'would be expressed by a zero of awareness of conditions. The eyes are excluded'. For Valéry recognizes that the living system depends not only upon conscious processes but upon an entire substructure of automatic reflexes, cyclic responses and unconscious acts. How does an experience consciously registered the first time of encounter, become integrated into reflex responses? How are these built up from childhood, he asks, prompted by the observation of his own children growing up and acquiring lan­guage? Such examples serve to remind us that the notes, however abstract they may appear, are rooted in the personal experience of self-observation and obser­vation of others. Human emotions are part of the system and throughout the notes, the theories are constantly tested against the responses of laughter and tears, for both are indicators of the limits of thought, a form of release for an idea or image that surpasses the capacity for thought.
SOMA AND CEM
'Any philosophical System in which the human body does not play a fundamen­tal role is inept, incapable.' Thus, Valéry affirms the distinct nature of his contri­bution, which serves to relativize the perception of him as being focused exclu­sively upon the higher rational purposes of the mind. Indeed, he is at pains to stress the wider context within which thought operates and upon which it de­pends for its existence: 'The mind is a moment of the body's response to the world.' Despite being one of the shortest of the chapters, SOMA AND CEM out­lines a singular approach, which does not affirm 'Soma' as the opposite pole to thought, but views it as an integral part of a triadic system. Valéry was from the earliest times concerned to identify the physical and sensory constraints upon thought as well as the physical and sensory responses that are generated. But the understanding of these as part of a wider perceptual process of being-in-the­world along with the more systematic use of the symbol CEM developed rather later. Valéry also refers to the triad using the Greek terms E (Soma), K (Kosmos) and Psy (Psyche) as three interconnecting units, one of physical identity, one of external reality and one characterized by change, possibility, doubt or even absence; all of the states of human experience can, he asserts, be viewed in terms of the interaction of these variables. He seeks, accordingly, to identify the dif­ferent sets of relationships which are in operation at any one time between body and world, body and mind, mind and world. But this does not mean that they make a harmonious whole: the world with which the body interacts is not the same world as that with which the mind connects, while the body is consistently viewed as something foreign to his own sense of being: 'My body" is as foreign to me as any object -- (if not even more so --) and is more intimate to me, more primarily and essentially "I" than any thought.' The response of the mind to the body moves between amazement, repulsion, scientific curiosity and ignorance. In one sense, the body is a finely tuned machine; Valéry's widespread contacts with the medical world meant that he was very familiar with the mechanisms at work beneath the skin and in his notes he analyses the functioning of the different organs of the body: the circulation of the blood, breathing, mus­cular activity, the stimulation and responses of nerves, bodily functions, the appendages and in particular the strange wonder that is the hand. At the same time, his own acknowledged nervous disposition and acutely sensitive emotions meant that he was always aware that man could not be reduced to a thinking brain in a well-tuned machine: the experiences of vertigo, nausea, pain, pleasure and the full power of the sensibility can never be overlooked.
Nor can the significance of the encounter with the world around be dis­missed; if any living creature, whether animal or human, is formed by its envir­onment, it also depends upon its struggle with the environment for what makes it most characteristically itself. One note in particular develops this idea with great insight (and uncanny anticipation of developments in medical science). Imagine, Valéry suggests, that a specially engineered environment could provide all that is required to keep the body of a living organism alive, relieving it of the urgent all-consuming necessity of assuring its own survival, then 'the animal would be strangely reduced', as instincts, nerves and muscles lose their purpose, and mind, emotion and actions cease to function. For 'the essential wonders of life' -- the passions, knowledge, creativity itself -- are the unstable, incalculable responses to the inadequacy of the environment.
The body, then, is an essential and equal constituent of the partnership, not though in a purely anatomical sense: it functions as 'my body' the more un­noticed it is. The 'real body' is envisaged as a set of almost abstract functions and formulas intimately associated with the impersonal notion of the pure self: 'The I is the more or less hidden role which the real body plays within consciousness'. The experience of the present is entirely dependent upon the phenomenological association of corporal sensation, perception of surrounding things and psychic production: Valéry's significant contribution is to argue that consciousness can only come into being through this triadic relationship.
ATTENTION
Valéry's reflections on the functioning of the mind took a particular turn in the early years of the century when the subject proposed for the philosophy section of the Prix Santour for 1905 was 'Attention'. In the event, the prize was not awarded that year; Valéry's own essay not only countered the current conven­tions of thinking as exemplified by the jury members themselves, but was sub­mitted incomplete. Nevertheless, the subject accorded with his current concerns as part of a network of themes including Surprise and Expectation ('Attente'). The dominant theorist of the time (and prominent jury member) was Théodule Ribot, whose work La Psychologie de l'attention (Paris, Alcan, 1888) was the major reference point and is one of the rare books to be cited by Valéry in his notes.? In spite of this indebtedness -- or perhaps, precisely, because of it -- Valéry characteristically sought to distinguish his own position and demarcate his own contribution. A significant difference is that, unlike the scientific works he read, his own focus was not upon the pathology of an abnormal medical situation, but on the operation of the normal living system; another difference lies in the fact that, as was seen with the previous chapter, his concern is always to consider the im­plications across the whole range of functions. Thus an increase in attention in one area may depend upon less perception in another, so that fixing the gaze upon one element means that all the others are eliminated. ATTENTION is seen as an exceptional state of limited duration, within the overall frame of operation, an instance of a higher, more focused form of accommodation, implying a par­ticular form of adjustment between the self and one's mental or physical milieu. Attention is a form of energy which requires preparation or draws on an accu­mulated quantum of energy and is timed to function at the appropriate moment. It is a concentration of effort which is unstable, cannot last beyond a certain point and is measured by the outcome as may be seen not only in the phenom­enon of attainment or non-attainment of the goal, but also in an ensuing loss of effort or fatigue. Thus, while Valéry attends in several instances to the phe­nomenon of inner attention as a purely mental activity, it is also investigated as a function involving other bodily systems; indeed, in so far as it involves a dif­ference of intensity, it is a property of the nervous system. Specific instances are analysed to illustrate the range of faculties which have to be coordinated and which lead, at the same time, to an exclusion of others. The act of threading a needle calls upon a visual value, a motor value, a mental picture of the achieved goal, an effort of will as well as, at a certain point, the act which gambles upon success. Whether threading a needle or writing a sonnet, attention coordinates the faculties while acting against probability. The image of the deep-sea diver is used to exemplify the specialized form of adaptation that attention represents: the physical constraints, the selectivity, the restrictions of time, the refusal to be distracted. Both examples are used to show that attention functions via an economy of effort, by reducing trial and error and working against probability to create greater certainty. A further aspect which is increasingly considered is that of visual attention as manifest in the fixing of the gaze. Ultimately, however, all these examples are brought back to the thinking process, to the higher degree of simultaneity and operational capacity of thought that, for the limited time it can be maintained, attention represents. What, Valéry asks primarily, are the factors determining 'the gaze of the mind'?
SENSIBILITY
SENSIBILITY explores a further dimension of 'My Psychology', namely the range of sensory and affective values that are inextricably bound to the experience of the lived life and form an integral part of the Body-Mind-World equation. We have already noted Valéry's own acute sensitivity and his attempts to deal with his own affective responses via a form of mental compartmentalization. The ten­sions and ambiguities appertaining to the term 'Sensibility' are particularly acute for the translator, in part because Valéry may seek to articulate affective states in terms of physical responses or nervous reflex actions, and in part because of the range of meanings encompassed by the term in French: at times it relates to the senses, at others to the feelings, and yet again, more specifically, to aspects of sensuality. Valéry appears to exploit to the full the room for manoeuvre which this allows, while emphasizing in all cases the potentiality it implies and which focuses less upon the nature of the response than on the capacity to respond. In time, Valéry comes to distinguish two types of sensibility, generalized and spe­cialized, the former an expression of an individual's general, inner, subjective capacity to respond, the latter more permanent and objective, a trace of the data arising from the interaction of the senses with the world around.
In the chapter on PSYCHOLOGY, Valéry notes that the brain is an electric en­gine, which leads him to evoke an 'electromagnetic' image of sensibility. Here the sensibility is seen as one element of a complex generator of energies; its role is to furnish the brain with stimuli derived from the outside world. This process is neither consistent nor predictable. Thinking of the unceasing activity of the mind, which is constantly modified by its contact with 'things', Valéry sees in­stability as the essential characteristic of both mind and sensibility. Although the sensibility is a constant presence, no single sensation can be either constant or continuous, and it can easily be seen that the impossibility of 'fixing' our sense impressions is a potent source of the instability of the mind. Moreover, though its role as provider of stimuli to the mind is essential, the sensibility is also a po­tential disturber of the peace, a limitation on the freedom of the intellect. The mind functions by acting 'against', by resisting the pull of emotional urges and the pentes, the inclinations and downward-leading paths of the sensibility. The mind works both on and against the sensibility by combining, organizing and simplifying the multiform impact and the incoherence of our sense impressions. It connects and classifies, whereas sensibility simply accumulates. But mind and sensibility together form the necessary condition of our knowing: we can know only what can be processed

In an outstanding review of these notebooks published in 'The New Criterion' Joseph Epstein writes, "From his early twenties until his death, Valéry began each day, arising between 5:00 and 6:00 A.M., aided by coffee and cigarettes, in the act of cerebration, writing out those of his thoughts that he felt were worth preserving. Ultimately, these came to a body of work of 26,000 pages, constituting twenty-nine volumes in a facsimile edition and two volumes in the Pléiade edition of his works.

Much of this material has never been available in English, though an enticing portion was published in the volume titled Analects in the splendid fifteen-volume English-language edition of Valéry that Jackson Matthews edited for the Bollingen Foundation. Valéry has always been fortunate in his editors, and perhaps in none more than Matthews, who gave the better part of his adult life to making him available to the small number of readers who do not negotiate the French language with complete ease but who are capable of appreciating both the importance and the pleasure that Valéry's work gives.

Now an English-language version of the full Cahiers, under the title Cahiers/ Notebooks, has begun, scrupulously and skillfully edited by three Valéry scholars, Brian Stimpson, Paul Gifford, and Robert Pickering. The first two volumes are currently available, in a handsome edition in English under the aegis of the international publisher Peter Lang.[1] Valéry seems to have struggled with the question of how to organize all this material in a systematic way; and felt unsure at times whether it ought even to be published at all. Five volumes are planned for this English edition, the last three more scientific and philosophical (another word that was no honorific in Valéry's vocabulary) than these first two, which are more literary and, in a distant sense of the word, personal. The project is a genuine contribution to scholarship and even more to the history of thought in the twentieth century.'"

I would only add that the integrity , determination, single- mindedness of Valery in his creative work, in his exploration of the life of the mind make him one of those singular poetic thinkers, in the company of Kafka, Kierkegaard, Rabbi Abraham Yitzhak Hakohen Kook, Thoreau, Emerson( who as Epstein points out in his presentation of grand ideas is Valery the lover of precision's opposite) who I have always felt myself naturally closest to.

The intellectual enterprise of Paul Valery was a unique one. He devoted the greatest part of his life in work of the mind to examining the workings of his own mind. He did so in the hope at one point anyway, of establishing a mathematical understanding of how the Mind works. In later years his ambition as he sensed its impossibility , was transformed and persisted in his precise definition of his own creative efforts. In this he wrote with an aphoristic lucidity, and a poetic intensity which are almost too difficult to bear over many long pages.
His notebooks come to over twenty some odd in French . They have been translated, edited and presented in this two volume 'Peter Lang ' edition.
Valery is a poetic thinker, and one of startling originality . Cliche cannot be found here, and formula- writing is far from his mind.
His whole enterprise was courageous and single. And the renown he won in later years somewhat surprised but never overwhelmed him.
Like his great hero and example Leonardo he was a precise observer who made of science, art, and of art, science.
His work will not convert you , but it will make you ' think' and ' think again', hopefully , poetically.

i find it extremely useful. whenever i looked a term up, i always found it. its easy enough to understand having only a minimum of statistical background, but it is also informative enough to be useful. :) its a winning combination.

i find it extremely useful. whenever i looked a term up, i always found it. its easy enough to understand having only a minimum of statistical background, but it is also informative enough to be useful. :) its a winning combination.

This book provides concise, understandable definitions of statistical terms used in medicine and biomedical sciences. Other acronyms and related nonstatistical terms are included, making this work a comprehensive and highly utilitarian reference book for anyone who writes, edits, or attempts to digest biomedical studies. Examples, graphs, and formulas are included when appropriate and necessary, but this book cannot be confused with a medical statistics textbook - it is far too friendly and utilitarian to be confined to use only by statisticians. This is biomedical statistics for the nonstatisticians among us.

Canticle to the Cosmos was originally a VHS tape set. I own a newer version of it on DVD and I enjoy it very much. However, I also own the audio tape set and I recommend it highly because it captures the passion of this man and lays out a vision of the cosmos that honors mystery, wonder, the improbability of it all and most important the hidden heart that seem to be behind it. This is not something that can be measured with instruments, but it can be felt into and intuited. Although Brian has written a good book, THE HIDDEN HEART OF THE COSMOS, it doesn't capture his presence in the way the audio tapes too. While I enjoy my videos they basically amount to taped lectures. You aren't missing much by saving money and getting just the audio tapes. If you want to know more about Brian Swimme I suggest visiting his website and reading my reveiw of the book referenced above. These tapes cover a lot of the same information except in much greater detail.

Fundamental to understanding... Everything. Dr Swimm uses very effective & evocative metaphors to help the listener envision & understand the origins of everything. The Primal fireball of universal creation comes alive & is now illuminated with a light that makes all previous understandings seem dim by contrast. A must for any mystic who seeks a more physics-founded approach, or any scientist who desires to peek into the numinous sentience of the universe itself.

Brian Swimme takes you on a cosmic journey into the universe, and then, he reminds us that we are that universe. He expands our view of the world and the world within us until the two become one resonating as bliss expressed in every word. -- Samuel Oliver, author of, WHAT THE DYING TEACH US: LESSONS ON LIVING.

This is a great book for anyone who is a fan, but also a real treat for people living in the metro-Detroit area, as a few of the celebrities asked are local TV and radio stars. She wrote to a lot of people over the years and has a great collection of stars' heroes, from Soupy Sales to Les Paul and of course Davy Jones! It's neat to find out who inspired the celebrities to be who they are today.

Mary Guerra is an authority on fandom as she is a member of a fanclub or two herself. I know this since she belongs to the fanclub I run for Davy Jones, Davy Devotees. Though the concept of fandom is normally perceived as being something the nonfamous possess, Mary spent years contacting various celebrities asking them just who they consider themselves a fan of and what fanclubs they would join if they could! She received personal responses from legends in the field of entertainment like RoseMarie and Phyllis Diller to Les Paul, inventor of the electric guitar, Richard Petty, of racing fame, columnist, Liz Smith and "Mr. Hockey" Gordie Howe. Shirley Jones, Peter Noone and Mary's personal favorite, Davy Jones of The Monkees, are just a few of the many other highlighted celebrities. If you've been a fan of anyone at anytime, this book gives you an interesting look at who those we admire actually admire. At times the featured celebrities provide laughs and at other times intriguing revelations. Overall this is a fun read with a lot of heart!

This book is fabulous. My husband and I found it to be a quick, entertaining read. We particularly enjoyed the entry from Mike Clark, our favorite radio DJ. It's interesting to see what people celebrities find heroic, and it conveys more of an inside look into their personality as well.

This is D. Brian Shafer's third novel in his series. It was as good as the two before it. This book spans the time after the death of Moses until Christ's birth. It is still written largely from the perspective of the angelic and demonic forces, as they watch the history of humanity unfold and are involved to the degree the Lord allows them. Their involvement is usually effected by the faith and prayers of man, as God releases them to become more involved. I remember parts of the novel concerning Joshua, David, Daniel, Samson, Rehoboam, Elijah, and the group of shepherds that the angels appeared to at Christ's birth. There are probably several other characters I've forgotten. Lucifer and his demons are still trying to stop God's promise from the garden--the one concerning the Seed who would crush Satan's head (Jesus).

In this book I didn't catch very much fictional license when the text was addressing Biblical events. Of course, the thoughts of the angels and demons were extrapolated from what we know of their nature, but I can imagine their thought processes flowing along the lines that Mr. Shafer took them.

The author continues to do a great job of showing how the demons worked through the religions of those times. This book, like the first two, would be great to give to someone who has barely read the Old Testament. It gives a great Biblical overview, alongside the fictional, yet insightful, thoughts and responses of the angels and demons.

This third book is also highly recommended! You won't be disappointed if you pick up this series.

I learned so much history from this book, as well as remembered previously learned stories from the bible. This book, and entire series, is enlightening and movtivational. It is brilliant in is uses of bibilical stories and scripture to create fiction that inspires one's life today. I haven't read such a good series in a long time.

I must admit I am a pretty tough read. But after reading the first couple of pages of Book One of this series I was hooked! The third in the Chronicles of the Host series takes a different angle on the story and covers the great Old Testament stories quite well. Obviously with so much material Shafer couldn't include everything--but he moved through the Old testament and hit the main themes that especially deal with the lineage of Messiah. The only bad thing about this book was that I have to wait for the final book. I think what impresses me is not only the biblical insights but the practical things I take away. I read knowing exactly what will happen in the Bible but the writing holds me. I recommend this to everyone I know!

Almost anything about Churchill makes an excellent read, and this book is no exception. It examines in detail each of the Prime Minister's major overseas travels during the war, looking at every aspect from the people involved and the issues discussed to the route taken. I especially liked the background it provides about the aircraft and the ships he traveled on. The author, one of Britain's leading naval historians, is to be commended for a marvelous book.

I particularly like the inside cover photograph of Churchill at the controls of a Boeing 314 bound for Bermuda. He looks quite a home in the cockpit.

-Michael W. Perry, editor of Chesterton on War and Peace: Battling the Ideas and Movements that Led to Nazism and World War II

The author delivers what the title page promises: a very nice and expert discussion of the details surrounding the transport of Prime Minister Churchill during his several long journeys in World War II.

Brian Lavery writes with the sure hand of authority on the specific air and ocean means by which the great war leader made his way to important conferences with allied leaders. This is not a political or policy book, but it does help one better understand the difficult travel (when 747s were not about) undertaken by the elderly but still intrepid Mr. Churchill and the significant resources devoted by Great Britain to make his trips come off so successfully.

British historian Brian Lavery presents Churchill Goes To War: Winston's Wartime Journeys, an in-depth examination of not only Churchill's historic meetings with Roosevelt, Stalin, and other leaders during the course of World War II, but also the harrowing logistics and risks involved in transporting a prime minister through dangerous skies and across hostile oceans during an era of global war. Covering a time before the rise of the civilian airliner, Churchill Goes To War covers the prime minister's travels in a battleship at sea, to flights across enemy-occupied North Africa, to his crucial conferences at Yalta and Potsdam in 1945. A handful of vintage black-and-white photographs illustrate this engaging examination, accessible to lay readers and historians alike.