Burton Books

In the 1960's, Burton R. Clark wrote THE DISTINCTIVE COLLEGE: ANTIOCH, REED, AND SWARTHMORE. His highly influential book was a best seller of the times which argued, intelligently, that consumers seeking higher liberal arts education do well to avoid "me-too" and "wanna-be" accredited higher ed diploma mills in favor of "distinctive" colleges. Such places, he stated, are known not only for distinguished, high accomplishment, high energy alumni, but also for being genuinely "interesting and distinctive," populated by obviously dynamic and intellectually articulate and outspoken undergraduates. Clark also suggested other guideposts and evidences of "distinctive," meant in a positive, desireable sense.

His book was regarded as very important in a time of high intellectual ferment and soul searching in America, and in the world, generally. It deserved to be.

Of the three "ideal" colleges examined, Clark's obvious favorite was Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, 60 miles north of Cincinnati. The famous school was founded in 1852 by Massachusetts intellectual rebels in the decade prior to the American Civil War of 1861-65, and intended as an alternative to establishment schools of the times, especially Harvard. Horace Mann, then a U.S. congressman, was chosen to serve as Antioch's first president (1852-1859). Prior to his congressional service, Mann had set up the first widespread public education system in the USA (in Massachusetts), and became known as the "father of American public education." Interestingly, his successor, a Dr. Hill, served only briefly as Antioch president before being selected to become president at Harvard in Massachusetts, the school Antioch had been set up to improve upon.

The establishment of Antioch College in Ohio was a national pre-Civil War event, reported in the New York Times and all across the USA, then less than 100 years old. Over the following 149 years (I write this in June, 2001), the New York Times was to devote a great deal of coverage to Antioch College (several pages of the current print version of the NYT Index are devoted to Antioch) as the school repeatedly called attention to itself, its students, and the proposition that higher education in America is not a dull subject. Love it or hate it, no-one could deny that Antioch College in Ohio has always been an "interesting" school, and being "interesting," argued Dr. Clark in the 1960's, is the first and most important quality of "the distinctive college."

Now, the advice of sage Chinese (which is not all of them) on the subjecting of "being interesting" is reflected in a famous Chinese curse which, roughly translated, is "May you be born in interesting times." What does this tell us about "interesting" colleges?

One thing it tells us, by implication, is that any truly "interesting" college is going to experience rough, controversial, and highly risky times, and is likely to be subjected not only to praise and high regard (of the type delivered to Antioch College by Dr. Burton Clark in the 1960's), but also to criticism, unfair and untrue defamation, and even physical attacks. Antioch College in Ohio has experienced all of these, certainly in much higher quantities than the other two "distinctive" colleges mentioned in the title of Clark's book, Reed and Swarthmore (both far quieter, and, one might conclude, less "interesting" places than Antioch).

But like another uniquely American institution, the Mississppi River, Antioch College in Ohio still "keeps rolling along." It's been up (was one of America's most prestigious colleges in the 1950's and 1960's), and it's been down (following problems in the mid-1970's, its prestige dropped quite a bit for a temporary period, then returned in the late 1980's), but it's never been out. A book devoted only to reprints of New York Times coverage of Antioch College in Ohio over 149 years would make interesting reading, and would as well be an important comment on American higher education at its best.

Burton C. Clark's THE DISTINCTIVE COLLEGE: ANTIOCH, REED, AND SWARTHMORE is an important book. Anyone educated in America and anyone who cares about America's contribution to higher education in the 20th Century (and others) should get it and read it.

From a physician's point of view in this evolving medical world of ours, Robert Burton has captured feelings we (physicians) all have and shares them in a way that is very real and very entertaining.

My daughter a beginning reader read this without difficulty. The book has no slang or words my daughter sometimes has trouble with in the "All Aboard Reading" series. She also really enjoyed looking at the beautiful, somewhat old-fashioned illustrations.

The Opera Journeys Mini Guide Series is just wonderful; it's like a "Cliff Note" of the opera, and extremely informative and educational. I particularly like the size; these guides are not cumbersome and fit right into my shirt pocket. The ladies will find sufficient room in their pocketbooks.

The story narrative with the music examples is excellent. I prefer it to a libretto; indeed, it's a much easier way to follow the essence of the story. The essay is magnificent; very well written, not pedantic, and extremely insightful and comprehensible. I congratulate Burton Fisher for a job very well done and Amazon for making these handy, information-laden booklets available. The Opera Journeys Mini Guide Series is a wonderful contribution to opera education and opera appreciation.

My tip: acquire the entire collection because you will be in easy reach of superbly presented opera guides consisting of story analysis, principal characters in the opera, story narrative with music highlights, background, analysis, and commentary.

Heinz Dinter, Ph.D.

The Opera Journeys Mini Guide Series is just wonderful; it's like a "Cliff Note" of the opera, and extremely informative and educational. I particularly like the size; these guides are not cumbersome and fit right into my shirt pocket. The ladies will find sufficient room in their pocketbooks.

The story narrative with the music examples is excellent. I prefer it to a libretto; indeed, it's a much easier way to follow the essence of the story. The essay is magnificent; very well written, not pedantic, and extremely insightful and comprehensible. I congratulate Burton Fisher for a job very well done and Amazon for making these handy, information-laden booklets available. The Opera Journeys Mini Guide Series is a wonderful contribution to opera education and opera appreciation.

My tip: acquire the entire collection because you will be in easy reach of superbly presented opera guides consisting of story analysis, principal characters in the opera, story narrative with music highlights, background, analysis, and commentary.

Heinz Dinter, Ph.D.

The Opera Journeys Mini Guide Series is just wonderful; it's like a "Cliff Note" of the opera, and extremely informative and educational. I particularly like the size; these guides are not cumbersome and fit right into my shirt pocket. The ladies will find sufficient room in their pocketbooks.

The story narrative with the music examples is excellent. I prefer it to a libretto; indeed, it's a much easier way to follow the essence of the story. The essay is magnificent; very well written, not pedantic, and extremely insightful and comprehensible. I congratulate Burton Fisher for a job very well done and Amazon for making these handy, information-laden booklets available. The Opera Journeys Mini Guide Series is a wonderful contribution to opera education and opera appreciation.

My tip: acquire the entire collection because you will be in easy reach of superbly presented opera guides consisting of story analysis, principal characters in the opera, story narrative with music highlights, background, analysis, and commentary.

Heinz Dinter, Ph.D.

This is a very well done edition of a fascinating medieval romance. There is a bilingual text, the original Greek on one page and a good English translation opposite. The format is handy if you want to try to read the Greek and need to quickly check your translation. The story itself is poetic and the vocabulary often seems more classical than Byzantine. As the original introduction says, it is a story of "flight, wandering, storms at sea, abductions, violence, robbers, prisons, pirates, hunger..., unlucky separation from one another, and in the end bridal chambers and nuptials." A very worthwhile read.

This is the fifth in the extremely successful series of Brian J. Burton's new versions of the old melodramas.

This new version of the famous temperance drama differs from the original American one in so much that the action now takes place in England. Almost half of the dialogue is new and much of the remainder has been trimmed or rewritten to make it more acceptable to modern audiences whilst still retaining the flavour of the original.

Although in no sense a 'musical', it does contain ten new songs in the Victorian manner which are simple enough for even the least experienced of singers. The lyrics and the melody lines are printed in the book, with full piano score available separately. This is a full acting edition containing all the moves and the complete lighting, music, costume and property plots. There are comprehensive production notes which include construction details of the simple settings.

Although there are eight speaking parts for women and seven for men, by doubling this can be reduced if required or alternatively increased by the addition of any number of non-speaking parts.
--- from book's back cover

EARLY CHINESE LITERATURE. By Burton Watson. 304 pp. New York : Columbia University Press, 1962. ISBN 0-231-08671-7 (pbk.)

Burton Watson has always struck me as an eminently civilized scholar and as a fine translator. Unlike certain others, he wears his scholarship lightly, and doesn't overburden his books with extraneous matter. His many translations and studies of Chinese and Japanese Literature are of uniformly high quality, and are well worth owning as they are books one often to returns to.

In the present book he has given us an account of Chinese writing from the time of the Chou Dynasty (1100 B.C. to 249 B.C) to the middle of the Latter Han (A.D. 25 to A.D. 220). The important works of this period are described with many illustrative quotations.

After a brief but typically excellent Introduction, three main sections follow : HISTORY; PHILOSOPHY; POETRY. Each section includes a selected list of translations, and the book is rounded out with a Chronology and a detailed Index.

Of especial interest in the Introduction is Watson's discussion of Classical Chinese, where, after a few remarks on the nature of the language, he makes a point of telling us that "the reader should perhaps be reminded that when he reads these early Chinese works in translation, he is at many points reading not an incontovertible rendering of the meaning of the original, but only one of a variety of tentative interpretations" (p.12). This is a useful reminder for those laboring under the misapprehension that there can be such a thing as a 'definitive' translation from Classical Chinese.

Watson covers a wide range of topics in his book. HISTORY gives us his discussions of, and translations from, The Book of Documents, The Spring and Autumn Annals, The Tso chuan, The Kuo yu or Conversations from the States; The Chan-kuo ts'e or Intrigues of the Warring States; and several other works.

PHILOSOPHY takes up Confucian Writings such The Lun yu or Analects, The Meng Tzu or Mencius, the Hsun tzu, etc.; Ritual Texts such as The Li chi or Book of Rites, The Hsiao Ching or Classic of Filial Piety (in style and contents similar to the Li chi though transmitted separately), The I ching or Book of Changes, etc. Then follow the Mohist Writings, the Taoist Writings (The Lao tzu, The Chuang Tzu, The Lieh Tzu), Legalist Writings (Book of Lord Shang, The Han Fei Tzu) and Eclectic Writings (The Kuan Tzu).

POETRY offers Watson's interesting discussions of, and fine translations from, The Book of Songs, The Ch'u Tz'u or Elegies of Ch'u, The Han Fu, and a few selected Songs and Ballads.

Watson's book is civilized, informative, well-written, and richly illustrated, and can be strongly recommended as an excellent survey of a fascinating period, and as interesting background reading for both students and the general reader.

Burton MacDonald's book is "A MUST HAVE" for all thoe interested in learning how archaeology has determined when the Primary History (Genesis- 2 Kings) was composed. MacDonald has first-hand experience in surveys of Transjordan, and is a trained archaeologist, as well as a biblical scholar. His conclusions from his knowledge of Transjordan, is that the Pentateuchal narratives were set in an Iron II world that the narrator's audience could relate to (Late Iron II, ca. 640-560 BCE). MacDonald surmises that ONLY in this era are MOST of the cities, towns and hamlets mentioned in the Exodus narratives in existence. They don't exist for Late Bronze Age or Iron I, it is ONLY Late Iron II ! MacDonald's observations about the archaeological evidence from Transjordan are remarkably like Israel Finkelstein's observations from his surveys in Israel/Canaan. That is, Finkelstein also finds that the Primary History (Genesis-2 Kings) was composed no earlier than the Late Iron II period for the same reasons- that is, NO OTHER PERIOD has MOST of the towns cities and hamlets in existence ! If I had to reccomend the two most important books for readers to possess who seek to learn how archaeology has determined when the Primary History was composed, it would be Burton MacDonald's above book, and Israel Finkelstein's _The Bible Unearthed_ ...Both of these books rank 5 stars with me. ...
All the best, Walter R. Mattfeld