Gibson Books

All the players and all the stats and what happened to the players, hockey books don't get more informative than that. Great pictures as well.

Great inspirational story of friendship,business and transformation of two nurses who lead very different lives, yet merge them into a story of success after a very difficult time.

Margaret Gibson knows how to say what she has to say in such an evocative, lyrical way that each word is a perfect fit, inseparable from the whole. Her poetry gives me joy, helps me see and remember shared joys, and want to hear and read more. Thank you.

Elegant, yet understated. Not too showy, not too glossy, not too shabby. Perfect for written correspondence with class.

This memory book for baby is beautiful and contains all of baby's milestones that you want to remember. It includes space for religous, school, holiday, friends, and pet memories and more. I especially like that it goes through age 7.
We received this as a gift for our first daughter and I have searched high and low for another copy for our second daughter. Our first daughter loves to look through her memory book with me.

I came across this cookbook in my local bookstore. I was looking for a cookbook to give to my friend, who is getting married. As I flipped through the pages, I realized that I also NEEDED a copy for myself......so much so that I am ordering a second copy from Amazon (the bookstore only had 1 copy left). This book is perfect for the beginning cook, as well as experienced cooks. It is full of simple recipes that don't require a lot of ingredients. It uses "normal" ingredients that you already have in your kitchen. This cookbook is worth $50.00 to me.

Ms Merchant has recounted a memorable bit of days gone by with real people, her family. This book is a good read and not a long one. I wish it were longer. Do yourself a favor and read it

My assessment begins with Gibson's claim that his study has made an important contribution to the operationalization of the concept of reconciliation. I find little to disagree with in this claim. Reconciliation is conceptualized as a multidimensional variable involving at least four aspects: interracial reconciliation, political tolerance, support for the principles of human rights, and legitimacy. Gibson does not dispute that these dimensions do not provide an exhaustive definition of reconciliation, but he maintains that that they are central to its meaning. This is especially true in the study of South African reconciliation, because three of the measures-interracial reconciliation, political tolerance, support for the rule of law-are enumerated as part of the objectives of the truth and reconciliation process in the statute creating the TRC, while one-legitimacy-is mentioned in the commission's final report. Further, Gibson contends that these elements are the building-blocks of democracy. At a minimum, democratic consolidation requires interracial accommodation, tolerance of political foes, support for both abstract and applied principles of the rule of law, and willingness to accept the legitimacy of major political institutions even when they produce unfavorable policy outcomes. In fact, Gibson views reconciliation as a mini-theory of the process of democratization, with the logic of the theory proceeding as follows: amnesty leads to truth, truth leads to reconciliation, and reconciliation leads to democratization. His focus, however, is on the correlation or causal linkage between truth and reconciliation, although he devotes a section of the volume to an examination of the effect of amnesty on reconciliation in South Africa.

In OVERCOMING INTOLERANCE IN SOUTH AFRICA, Jim Gibson and Amanda Gouws have writen what is, in at least one respect, a courageous book. It is courageous because it is in many ways pessimistic about the prospects for political tolerance (and therefore, they argue, for democratic consolidation) in post-apartheid South Africa. While not a particularly surprising view -- contemporary South Africa, riven by racial tension, political strife, economic instability, and an epidemic of HIV/AIDS, is by nearly all objective criteria a most unlikely candidate for a successful transition to stable democratic rule -- it is nonetheless a position at odds with nearly all policy makers and commentators, who generally offer much rosier predictions for South Africa's political future.

Thus, when Gibson and Gouws' book begins with a somewhat bleak forecast about the possibility of tolerance there, I expected it to be a set-up for a dramatic concluding turnabout. What I found instead was a creative, meticulous, and thoroughly honest depiction of the condition of mass political tolerance in South Africa, albeit one which paints a somewhat more dismal picture of the future than others might have it. Their theoretical approach is psychological, drawing most heavily on the work of Paul Sniderman, John Sullivan, and George Marcus, as well as on Gibson's own prior work in the U.S., South Africa, and Russia. In this view, democratic political tolerance (in essence, a willingness to allow one's political opponents to act within the confines of a democratic system) is closely linked to the notion of threat, both real and perceived, which in turn are often a function of social (i.e., group) identity. They evaluate these theories' expectations with data from a two-wave panel survey of South Africans, conducted during 1996 and 1997. The details of this survey are painstakingly outlined in an Appendix, and the survey itself could be the subject of its own review; suffice it to say that, in addition to the care with which the sample was chosen, the instrument benefits from the incorporation of a number of experimental and quasi-experimental components with which to disentangle the myriad influences that shape tolerance in South Africa.

A brief overview of South Africa's recent political history in Chapter 2 sets the stage for the book's theoretical and empirical core. Part II, encompassing Chapters 3 through 5, might best be summarized by a line found much later in the text: "(T)olerant South Africans are a lonely few" (p. 173). Through analysis of a series of questions and vignettes, Gibson and Gouws reveal that not only is intolerance commonplace, but also that it is "pluralistic," occuring across the whole range of racial groups in South African society, and that it is relatively unresponsive to the nature of the particular situation in question (so, for example, such factors as the endorsement of a demonstration by community leaders failed to have any effect on individuals' willingness to tolerate that demonstration). But while their conclusions are at times depressing for those who desire to see a stable, democratic South Africa, the authors themselves nonetheless maintain a tempered optimism about that country's future.

That they manage to do so largely a function of Part III of the book, which focuses on the prospects for attitude change and which is, for my money, the most compelling part of the book. Once again, though, Gibson and Gouws paint a picture of tolerance which is, at best, mixed. While intolerant attitudes are somewhat malleable, tolerant ones are even more so; consistent with work in other countries, it is far easier to convince South Africans to be intolerant than to tolerate. Similarly, Chapter 8's exploitation of the panel structure of the survey finds that, while tolerance remained relatively stable in the aggregate over their two surveys, at the individual level substantial racial differences exist in the direction and causes of changes in toleration. Thus, in many respects, positive shifts in tolerance among colored South Africans (who benefited from apartheid) mirror the negative shifts among whites. Similarly, the absence of well-developed democratic norms among black South Africans -- undoubtedly the result of years of powerlessness and disenfranchisement -- contrasts with the strength of democratic committments among South Africans of Asian descent, many of whom trace their roots to democratic India.

Many of the readers of this review will be most interested in Chapter 7, which details the authors' experiments with the interplay of political tolerance and judicial institutions, most notably South Africa's Constitutional Court. Here again, the verdict is, on balance, grim: while South Africans can, under some circumstances, be convinced to tolerate their political foes by a decision of the Court, those in the black majority are the least likely to do so. Conversely, however, the ability of the Court to engender intolerance is immense by comparison, leading to real concerns over the Court's potential to act as a countermajoritarian force.

Of course, there are things about the book with which one can quibble. For example, throughout the book, the reader is barraged with tables of analyses, a necessary inclusion in this heavily empirical work but also a decidedly mixed blessing from a stylistic perspective. At the same time, the book contains remarkably few figures; a judicious use of graphical presentations might have ameliorated a bit of the inundation one feels in some of the later chapters. But while the tables can at times be bewildering, the book's saving grace is the text which accompanies them; in the hands of less gifted writers, much of the analyses therein would have been transformed from a careful exploration of a fascinating and important question into a powerful sleep aid. And while in its current form OVERCOMING INTOLERANCE may not satisfy some readers' desire for tales from places far away, its solid theoretical grounding, creative use of experimental designs in a survey context, and forthright (if a bit gloomy) conclusions are a model for research on such a simultaneously slippery and significant subject. And despite the authors generally acherontic outlook, the authors remain guardedly upbeat about the prospects for a tolerant, multiracial, democratic South Africa. One can but hope that their optimism is both warranted and realized.

After reading W. Sumerset Maugham's `The Moon and Sixpence' said to have been based on the life of Paul Gauguin, (can someone tell me why that title?), I decided to read a Gauguin's biography just to see exactly what is meant by "Based on the life of..." means. So naturally I went to the library; free. I checked out Howard Green's book: "Paul Gauguin (First Impressions)"; what luck, it was the only one on the shelf. It is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read and the art work reproduction and colors are just glorious and I am now so turned onto Gauguin's painting and just have to have a copy of this book for my own. The book is wonderfully written and portrays Paul Gauguin as not a very pleasant man, as did Maugham. But how do you separate the Man from his art or his body of work; and should you? What drives someone to dedicate his life to painting and abandon his responsibilities, his children? He's dead now and I can love his art and dislike the man; perhaps great art only comes from great suffering. Can't wait till my copy arrives.