Pitt Books

This book is well illustrated and gives the available info on Brad's life in a readable format, and a decent size. Could benefit from an index. Some of the pictures I have not seen elsewhere. It is now a bit out of date, and some of the stuff mentioned as future projects has not in fact materialised (whatever happened to the idea of Brad playing General Custer for example? That would have been fun!) The best of the Brad Pitt books I have seen so far.

I'm not going to lie to you. Reading this book, I felt like a real ballerina boy, head stuffed with cream puffs and dandylions in my hair. I said I wasn't going to lie. If you have this book on your bookshelf, you may pursue the "Greek love." No lie. You may want to have sex with another man (unless you are a woman, in which case it is fine, not that it's not fine the other way, but you know what I mean).

This bildungsroman follows young Pitt (Pitt the Younger) from his carefree days in the corn fields of Iowa to desinger satin sheets and Jennifer Aniston's tang. I don't want to give too much away, but here are some of my favorite bits:

*Brad turning to acting after a boring two-years as Asst. Deputy State Comptroller of Iowa.

*Hard drinking, sweet loving.

*In Brad's debut (Thelma and Louise) he actually suggested they ride off the cliff at the end.

*Harrowing dance with heroin culimnates with near-fatal OD outside of the Viper Room.

*Really bald.

Unfortunately, there aren't really any other atmospheric textbooks out there that covers the vast amount of material which this text covers. The greatest flaw in this book is that it has got to have one of the worst index i have ever seen! It is very difficult searching for certain topics in the book. So unless you are not ready to create your own index for this book, you shouldn't buy the book. Other than that it is a pretty informative book.

The scope and technical detail of this seminal work covering the cutting edge in Atmospheric chemistry is beyond remarkable. Just the number of references is mind boggling. The book presents the material in a very readable and understandable style. The authors have kept the reader in mind. They also add surprising levity on occasion and show a keen grasp of areas outside chemistry. I know of no other work in this field that is more current, comprehensive, and helpful. If only other scientific works were as thorough and readable.

If we, the reader, are skeptics and believers of the possibility of art, if we imagine that there is another space language occupies outside of that small room that is our lives, if we are willing to accept ironies and unwillingly acknowledge the tragedy that has always been the recurring theme of the individual, then this book is the past, the present, and future of our desire to live. It's hard to comprehend that there can be anything so miserable as a wish to live forever or anything so beautiful as two old horses named Anastasia and Sandman, but Larry Levis is one of the greatest poets in the American language and culture because of his ability to texture language and improvise narratives so fluid that the reader understand and arrives at that place where all words and all stories begin and end. That place being the middle or the ever-present present that exists when a word is spoken or read and the mind attempts to find the object, the meaning, or the example for what that word represents. Or that ever-present that becomes the present as the story teller remakes the story so that it is again something real and intangible and we experience it because it is there and we do not experience it because it is not there. I don't know how else to explain the book and each poem that invites the reader to examine mortality without the immediate allusion to death but the difficult exercise of life and the ironies it weaves around us. It is impossible to read this book and not feel completely desperate, lost, and in want of every moment of passion we've ever owned and lost to circumstance, fear, the idea of being embarressed in front of our peers. Even the depraved moments we've had in our lives seem worthwhile in the language, story, and voice of this book that is so much of heart of its author that it remains a ghost behind its words. And if you've ever wanted to be bridge your life as an adult to your lost childhood, if you've ever wanted to be invisible, or drive as fast as your car could go, or found yourself talking to a horse, a tree, an empty page that replies without sympathy, without comfort, and even mocks you in its silent and indifferent manners, then this book might remind you of how it felt to have so many desires with nothing but your hands to carry them with.

When Larry Levis, author of The Wrecking Crew and The Widening Spell of Leaves, died unexpectedly in May of 1996, he left behind Elegy, a collecion of twenty poems. Readers will recognize the style of Levis. His poems are labyrinthine and digressive in a way that many readers might find off-putting, but his associative peregrinations do little to detract from the overall power of his work. Readers will find the same themes they have come to expect from Levis: death, ecstasy, and human indifference. Reading Levis' work is like witnessing a car accident--a particularly bad one--your own.

I had to buy this book for a class but ended up enjoying and reading the rest for fun. Worth the buy.

While I like to read poetry, I must say that I have never read an entire book of poetry front to back in one or two sittings. That is, until I came across this book. These are poems like none other that I have read. They somehow capture the confusion and exhiliration of growing up in our world that is sometimes sick and sometimes sublime. I love the bravery and vulnerability of the boy that is described in these poems. "How can a boy explain wanting/to taste everything, even the detergents/of his own body: tears, nose drip, sweat of his armpit, salt/of his wrist, skim milk/of his own semen?"
Bursk's poems are addictive. You read one and then you must read more.

This book has been a constant source of reference for me in the many years I've owned it. For a strategic look at WWII you can't do better. With the European and Pacific theatres shown side-by-side it's easy to see how the various campaigns unfolded and often affected one another although half a world away. Great book!

This atlas gives a two-page spread of the world for each month of the war, with text descriptions and small maps detailing the major events that month (e.g., Operation Crusader, Stalingrad). I find the text to be usually quite detailed and succinct for the small space it inhabits. Full-page text blocks detail the big operations, such as D-Day, Barbarossa, the Japanese expansion into the Pacific, etc. This format works very well for seeing the global scale of the conflict, and makes a very good general reference. Worthy of note are the front- and endpapers that show the pre- and postwar situations.

This book has been awarded one of two Honorable Mentions for the 2001 Best First Book Prize from the Foundations of Political Theory division of the American Political Science Association. The citation reads as follows:

In The Philosophy and Politics of Czech Dissidence from Patocka to Havel, Aviezer Tucker provides a captivating critical narrative of the Charter 77 movement in Czechoslovakia and of the ideas that inspired it. The result is an informative and provocative case study of the intersection of theory and praxis during a pivotal time in Eastern European politics. Patocka was the pre-eminent Czech philosopher during the thirteen year career of the Charter 77 movement, and his philosophy played a central role in its history. His life and fate, as Tucker observes, parallels that of Socrates in Athens; and Havel's role as a philosopher president presented him with the kind of problems Plato confronted in his reforming mission to Syracuse. Tucker illuminates this important chapter in recent history and provides thoughtful critical commentary on the post-Heideggerian and phenomenological ideas that his subjects brought to life.

This highly readable book is a fantastic resource for anyone interested in the roots of the dissident movement in communist Czechoslovakia. Tucker describes the philosophical heritage of key members of Charter 77 with amazing clarity. He also does a great job of explaining the political and historical context of their thoughts.

Please note that the book is not an encyclopedic account of Czech dissident thought. "From Patocka to Havel" in the title might better be phrased "OF Patocka AND Havel," since the work of other Czech dissidents are mentioned mostly in reference to these two men's theories. However, as theoretical background to a complex issue, this book is well worth reading.

Douglass Sullivan-Gonzalez's Piety, Power, and Politics gives an evenhanded and insightful look into this interesting time in Central American history. His treatment of Rafael Carrera and the leader's tumultous relationship with the Catholic Church obviously represents countless hours of primary source scholarship (as his bibliography attests). All in all the book is engaging and informative, not a bad combination at all in a work of such scholarship.

This book is fascinating as it explores a subject matter that is less familiar to most Americans. It is an excellent educational resource.

Moving and brilliant poems. Of course any English translation will leave much to be desired (the "language centers" of Hugo's brain were apparently intrinsically French), but this volume captures much of the imagery and emotion of the original poems. Fortunately, the original French is given on the adjacent pages.

Since almost no poetry by Hugo is available in English, this is a welcome sampling. THAT deserves five stars. The introduction is informative (and none too shy on opinions). The French original on the facing page is helpful for comparing with the translation. And the translator's notes on his method of translating put things in perspective. As usual, the translator must make a choice between two basic options: literalness (which may sacrifice "tone" or "rhyme"), or keeping the "sound" or rhyme of the original (which may necessitate substituting English words or phrases for those in the original). The current translator opted for the former choice. Fine. How odd, then, that he also mixes in elements of the second choice! The result sometimes is that you have neither the tone nor the rhyme nor the literal rendering of the original.

In one poem, for example, Hugo ends with a line that is six syllables long, with three of those words (and four syllables in those three words) carrying the same vowel sound -- "aw". Those words in French are "maison," "sans," and "enfants" (the last word ending the line.) Six syllables, four homonyms! Not bad! However, the translation has more than six syllables, and no words that sound alike,and some of the words in the translation are not in the original. How does that convey either the tone, mood, or rhyme of the original? In fact, the orignal has four phrases at the end of the poem, each of which repeats a pattern of contrast using the words "sans" ("without"): spring without flowers, a cage without bird, a hive without bees, a house without children. This obvious, simple, and intentional pattern is not maintained in the translation, and I wonder why. Instead, "poetic" license is in evidence by the translator. Part of Hugo's madness in this method may well have been to end with his clever (and lyrical) six-syllable, four-homonym ending, and in English, the "pay off" would not have been there. Still, how much license should a translator take?

In all, I am glad to have these poems, but I am restless till someone can find a way to come closer to Hugo. Maybe I should just learn French.

Paul Lewis has produced a profoundly important work on the role that state legislation, tax laws and public institutions play in producing the variety of TYPES of suburban development patterns seen across the American landscape. The case studies of the Denver and the Portland areas are illuminating and convincing. The study is based on the use of statistical data (which is organized efficiently and presented well for the lay reader), documentary and archival materials and interviews with public officials and private developers in both areas. In addition to its methodological resourcefulness, the book is also very well-written. It is accessible to those impatient with academic jargon and internecine debates among contending schools of politics and economics.

Having lived in the Colorado Front Range for 16 years, I can say with certainty that Lewis' Chapters 4 and 5 remain the ONLY comprehensive treatment of the growth patterns and policies in the Denver metro area. It should be required reading for legislators and civic leaders who grapple with growth and planning issues in Colorado. What's more, the solutions to the problems Denver has endured are apparent to the attentive reader, although their is no 'cookbook' recipe for change.

A timely and impressive piece of scholarship.

In SHAPING SUBURBIA, Paul Lewis craftily presents the thinking behind the well-known hypothesis that political fragmentation is associated with suburban sprawl. He futhers the thinking by providing a new numerical index of metropolitan political fragmentation and subsequently by testing its usefulness in empirical analysis. He investigates further the effects of political fragmentation by providing to case studies of the effects of state and local political organizational structure and action on local economic development. For the main part, the case studies are interesting and well-written, although more than a cursory knowledge of the specific geopolitical landscapes will help the reader through some of presentation of the more tangled struggles in the two metropolitan areas (Denver and Portland [Oregon]). I found Lewis's Political Fragmentation Index (PFI) particularly intriguing. It measures both the division of local government expenditures within a metropolitan area as well as the total level of local government expenditures per capita across the metropolitan area. Using it he shows that metro areas with high fragmentation (according to his index) tend to lose more than their "fair share" of office jobs, have more of a mismatch between where jobs are and where households reside, and have more "edge cities." He is unable to show that it affects the metropolitan density gradient, however. The statistical approaches that he uses are overly simplistic and the number of metropolitan attributes that he controls for across metropolitan areas is minimal. I am certain that he would agree that he should have controlled for the decision-making efficiency of the internal political structure of the primary central city, as well as the degree to which the metro area in general maintained a laissez-faire political ethos. Nonetheless, he has developed an index that could prove useful in other studies of metropolitan public finance. I am sure that Lewis's PFI will be used, modified, and retested many times during the next decade. Lewis never really touches on how fragmentation can be avoided. He also does not straight out say that it should be avoided. This is surprising in light of the many times he points to failures (public and private) that result from political fragmentation of metropolitan areas. As a result SHAPING SUBURBIA merely illuminates a well-known problem without providing a solution.

Who was Valentine Greatrakes? And should we even care? A footnote in an historical article lead the author of `A Small Moment of Great Illumination' on a decade-long search to find out. Greatrakes was a 17th-century Irish nobleman who appeared to have the power to heal with his hands alone--but being neither a member of the clergy, nor a King, his use of this power (sometimes effective, sometimes not) made him a radical, dangerously near the boundaries of clergy and royalty that his station (high as it was) did not permit. His healing powers made him especially suspect in Restoration England and Ireland, when tensions ran high between royalists and regicides, Protestants and Catholics. Nevertheless, Greatrakes' apparent ability to heal so many made him popular as well as infamous. Many denounced him as a quack, while others of high authority (no less than Robert Boyle) attested to the efficacy of his abilities.

This was the Greatrakes uncovered by the author of `Small Moment,' and the story is made more interesting for being interwoven with narratives of the author's research trips to England, Ireland and even Scotland--following in Greatrakes' footsteps. The tale takes us back and forth between the 17th and 20th centuries, in and out of libraries, archives, castles and pubs. The length of the narrative is just right--the author knows when to stop one section and switch to another (in many cases, had he lingered a minute longer we'd be bored).

This is a history of a history, a diary of historical research and the story of the research subject itself. It is made more readable by the fact that the author is an amateur (he was supported in his research and travels by a friend who is a professional historian). But `Small Moment' does not suffer because of it--the writing is good and the historical recreation appears to be solid. And while most may no longer care just who Valentine Greatrakes was, the exercise of rediscovering him--and the author's obsession with finding an original copy of ones of Greatrakes' books--brings to the fore the excitement of historical research for its own sake.

Part travelogue, part detective story, part comedy -- it's a quest. This is the story of the author's quest to know more about a footnote. The footnote was in a history of medicine he was reading almost twenty years ago. The footnote talked about one Valentine Greatrakes, an Irish master healer of the mid 1600's. Herein is the search. Through libraries, antiquarian booksellers, across England and Ireland - I suspect in not just a few pubs along the way.

Oh yeah! They were looking for a copy of Greatrakes diary. They went to a dowser who told them it was in a trunk in Bathgate, Scotland. Off to Scotland. Can you imagine going up to a lady in her house saying, 'we have reason to believe that a rare book we're looking for is in a trunk in your attic.' ... Here come the people wearing the white clothes looking for you. They have this hotel where the walls have padding on them so you won't hurt yourself.

A Delightful read.