Buck Books

Charles Sheeler in Doylestown: American Modernism and the Pennsylvania Tradition investigates one artist's lifelong engagement with the rich, distinctive traditions of rural Buck's County. It charts Sheeler's discovery of the region's architechture and artifacts beginning about 1910, when he and fellow artist Morton Livingston Schamberg rented an eighteenth-century farmhouse in Doylestown. It assesses what impact this seminal event had on Sheeler's early career, and how his cyclical return to Bucks County themes in later life reveals poignant attachments and emotional depths not usually ascribed to this twentieth-century painter and photographer - known primarily as an iconographer of the machine. By analyzing Sheeler's core attachment to the preindustrial vernacular, this exhibition and its catalovue reconstruct his attempt to reconcile part and present in a series of powerful complex pictures that resulted from his enduring fascination with the Pennsylvanian tradition.
--- excerpt from book's Preface

China endured a series of dramatic, and often tumultuous transformations in the last century. The 1930's and 1940's, in particular, were decades of major political, social, economic and technological change, and consequently, of major shifts in perception and awareness of the Asian nation and its people by the United States.

Karen J. Leong's THE CHINA MYSTIQUE: Pearl S. Buck, Anna May Wong, Mayling Soong, and the Transformation of American Orientalism, a work of solid scholarship and uncommon acuity, focuses on America's evolving images of China during these decades, specifically as reflected in the public lives of three diverse and singular women widely identified with the emerging nation: Pearl S. Buck, Anna May Wong and Mayling Soong. Scrupulously researched, the book is academic in tone, and written with precision, perception and clarity.

Leong argues that the ability to travel, and the nascent global mass-culture of the day granted these women a broader field of recognition and enhanced form of celebrity than hitherto attainable, thus facilitating a greater sphere of influence contributing to the gendering (or feminization) of a distant country traditionally held to be completely patriarchal, alien and inscrutable to Western eyes.

Adapting the late Edward Said's notion of orientalism--a highly politicized analysis of European colonial perspectives of "the Orient," and the resulting and enduring power relations between Asia and the West--Leong defines "American orientalism" as a distorted image of the Chinese as "primitive, slavish, exotic, manipulative, and amoral." She writes that these images were diametrically opposed to the positive traits of modernity, freedom and fidelity celebrated in American nationalism.

These negative images began to erode with increased immigration and diplomacy between China and the United States, and also through the efforts of American protestant mission boards. As China evolved into a strategically significant ally in the struggle against Japanese aggression, the old images were replaced by a romanticized and progressive view of China. Leong defines this Americanized and "highly gendered" reimaging as the "China mystique."

The author posits these evolving perceptions of Nationalist China concurrent with the United States' own immergence as a world power, and identifies the transformation of "American orientalism" to the "China mystique" as adjunct to America's rise to globalism. This shift of perception is an underlying theme of the book, and Leong masterfully studies the nuances, inconsistencies, contradictions and real power of this change.

Ultimately, this is as much a book about America and Americans, as it is about China.

In the book, Leong examines these women whose "transnational" association with China rendered each a personification of a specific aspect of the Sino-American cultural and political axis: Pearl S. Buck, a European American novelist who spent much of her life in China and was recognized worldwide as an uniquely qualified authority on China and the Chinese, Anna May Wong, a Los Angeles-born Chinese American actress who endeavored to cultivate a hybrid identity embracing both cultures, and Mayling Soong, (more commonly known as Madame Chaing Kai-shek), an American-educated daughter of a westernized Chinese capitalist who garnered sympathy and support for the often repressive Nationalist government as the eloquent and charismatic "First Lady" of China.

If these women helped to put an accessible and very feminine face on China, it was hardly one of traditional timidity and subordination. Instead, it was a countenance that expressed the newfound independence and the fluidity of identity befitting a "New China" and its stature as an emerging democracy. In fact, their unique positions and development of multifarious identities granted each of the women elements of power not typically afforded persons of their gender and/or race at that time.

Buck, Wong and Soong each tested the limits of their transnational status, and Leong expresses their particular experiences within broader political, cultural and historical contexts. It seems that the distinct negotiations of the cultural and political landscape, and the fluid assumption of identity through self-definition evidenced by these women is their lasting legacy.

In the end, Leong exposes America's thorough reassessment and seemingly enlightened appreciation of China and the Chinese in the outward embrace of progressivism, modernity and democratization for an expedient and opportune stance assumed in its own transformation from an isolationist nation to a global power. She also demonstrates how Buck, Wong and Soong each encountered reversals and barriers in their individual careers despite this period of enlightened perspectives on China.

Still, Leong is adept at separating propaganda and hypocrisy from the actual experience and expressions of power manifested in the lives and words of Buck, Wong and Soong. She acknowledges the real long-term and far-reaching effects that these women had on the development of cultural pluralism and the myriad ways in which American citizens choose to define themselves as a national community.

Leong's book is narrow in focus and specific in scope, but expansive in themes and relevance. As an account of personae in a specific historical milieu, a cultural study of perceptions of Americans and Chinese (and Chinese Americans) in the 1930's and 1940's, and as a thought provoking treatment of themes of identity, race, gender and nationality Leong's book succeeds on all levels.

I have been a Pearl Buck fan since I was a teenager and did not know until recent years that she also wrote children's books. Reading The Chinese Children Next Door and The Big Wave reaffirmed my belief that Pearl Buck was one of the greatest author's of all time. Although I read The Chinese Children Next Door quite a few years ago, I remember the message clearly. It is about a Chinese family who kept giving birth to one girl after the other. The mother was upset and kept wanting a boy. The father named each baby girl Beatiful, More Beautiful, Most Beautiful, etc., and loved his little baby girls unlike the stereotypical Chinese patriarch. You must read to find out if they ever have a boy.

When it comes to researching historical clothing it is easy to find Women's clothing, Men's is a bit harder, and Children's is harder yet, especially boys.
This is revised copy of Children's Costume in England from the fourteenth to the nineteenth Century by Anne Buck and Phillis Cunnington 1965
Excellent book! Photos of original garments. paintings, sculpture and period text as well. Very useful for those late SCAdians. the patterns in this book are from The Workwoman's Guide and Cassells for the 19th century.
This the best general overall view book on children's costume I have seen yet.
Arranged by age/chronology.

This is the story of men in search of God. It began when David MacArd founded a school in India becasuse he wished to change India on his own terms and in his own image. His son worked at the school. His Grandson became a Missionary. His great granddaughter fell in love with a native doctor, but was denied marriage by her Dad.

I think this book is wonderful, and please read it

Xi Lian's book is a well-written, well-researched, and fascinating account of the Protestant missionary movement in China 1902-1937. Reading it one sighs and thinks of the scramble since September 11, 2001 to learn about Islam. Geographical distance is no longer an excuse for ignorance of other cultures--and that applies to all protagonists. Xi writes of the gradual influence of China's culture and thought upon American Protestant missionaries, who came to China with ideals and good intentions but little knowledge; a substantial number,however, learned and returned to their own country with the "good news--gospel" that human spirituality is universal and the insights of the varying traditions are meant to be shared. God does not play favorites. When one reads of the ecumenical efforts among the Protestant missionaries in China in the 1920s one is astounded. That such efforts in the West had to begin all over again after WW II and the Second Council of the Vatican (1962-1965)is frustrating; we should be farther down the line.

The author is caustic at times, but always generous in his appraisals. To adopt the Chinese spirit of inclusion does not mean one's own beliefs will be diluted but that one's views and interpretations will be expanded.

The biographical accounts of three missionaries, Dr. Edward H. Hume,M.D., evangelist and then editor, Frank J. Rawlinson, and Pearl Buck illustrate the book's thesis: The good heart cannot be separate from a sound mind, but neither can the mind function to its fullest without sympathy.

This is a book worth reading!

I bought this book from AMAZON.Its a very good book for those who want to go for certification for medical billing and coding.I ordered this book on amazon on very good price, received this book on time.Wonderful service from amazon.Thanks

I feel this book is very helpful in studying for the certification exam because Ms. Buck explains medical terms in everyday language where the non-medical person can understand the meaning of the term. For instance, if a medical term is complex, she puts the definition in parentheses with a simple definition where most anybody can understand.
The book has three practice exams for the student to practice and monitor his/her progress.

i am clinical and forensic psychiatry.This book is practical manual for my clinical diagnosis and legal witness.