Robertson Books

The Winds of Evil is Arthur Upfield at his best. We have Detective-Inspector Napolean Bonaparte using his bush skills and his brain. We have a plot where it isn't obvious "whodunnit". And we have the benefit of Upfield's gift for describing the town, the surroundings, and the winds of evil themselves, as evidenced in the opening pages. This is definitely my favourite so far of all of the Arthur Upfield books that I've read.

In Wisconsin's Foundations: A Review Of The State's Geology And Its Influence On Geography And Human Activity, Gwen Schultz (Professor Emerita of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison) shows how Wisconsin's familiar landscapes, bodies of fresh water, fertile soils, northern forests, and varied landforms are all directly related to a special set of geological processes. Professor Schultz explains how Wisconsin's landscapes came to be the way they are, how Wisconsin looked in the past, the kinds of creatures that lived in Wisconsin before the coming of human beings. Wisconsin's geologic story began more than three billion years ago and is still a work in progress. Especially commended to the attention of geology students and non-specialist general readers with an interest in Wisconsin's varied landscapes, Professor Schultz's seminal work, Wisconsin Foundations, provides a reader friendly and very highly recommended introduction to it all.

This book exposes many parts of the female slave trade in Africa. Here we learn that the Islamic slave trade was made up primarily of women. The book helps to aswer this phenomenon by showing that not only were women used as Sex slaves in North Africa but that women from many traditional east african soceities performed much of the work, thus making them more productive. The questions sourounding the role of women in the slave trade is given a variety of looks. One slave girls narrative tells of how her mother is left to starve by the slave master who subsequently buries the daughter alive. This is the truth of slavery and especially the turth of slavery as it was propogated by Zanzibar in East Africa. Slaves were not 'protected' or treated as human beings, they were simply meat, frequently disgarded along the way when they got sick or seemed weak. This book finally exposes the truth about slavery fcusing on the enslavement of women and the role of women in slave soceities. Above all it shows that many of the African men, despairing of the arab slave caravans who took most of their women, turned to brigandage and joined roving bands of warlords, thus ensuring that Arfican pride would not be darkened by the cruel evils of slavery and its targeting of women by Sexual predators from the middle east and europe.

Seth J. Frantzman

This review relates to the Schocken first edition of 1980...

From the dustjacket: "Welcome to a superb story of what it is like to have a baby...and to take part in the obstacle race made by our society of the important transition to motherhood."

"This book sets forth the ways in which human reproduction and women as reproducers are socially defined in contemporary culture."

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Notes on Tables and Tests of Significance

Introduction

Paradigms of Women as Reproducers
- Medical Maternity Cases
- Psychological Constructs
- The Sociological Unimagination

The Subjective Logic of Reproduction
- Researching the Transition to Motherhood
- Assessing Outcome
- Only Connect
- Victims and Victors
- Reproduction and Change
- Losses and Gains
- A Psychology of Women?

Conclusion
- Mistakes and Mystiques
- Proposing the Future

Notes
Bibliography (15 pp)
Index

This is the second volume of Dr. Robertson's six volume set "Word Pictures in the New Testament" and is an excellent reference work when one is trying to understand the Greek language the New Testament was written in. Many nuggets are contained in this volume (as in the set itself) that explain just what a particular verse meant by the construction of the Greek. In Greek, just as in English, how one states something (the tenses of verbs, conditional clauses, meanings of participles, etc.) can add a richness to the writing that might be missed upon casual reading of a text translated out of the original tongue. The subtlies, the nuances, the shades of meaning the original writer meant and was understood by the reader reading the words in the original tongue are often lost in translations. Dr. Robertson has attempted to fill in the missing data that all translations from one language to another suffer. In his case, from Koine Greek into English. For the Pastor, teacher or lay person who wants to know the truth in a passage as recorded in the original Greek, this book, as well as the entire set, is an invaluable asset.

The second volume of "Word Pictures Of The New Testament" series, The Gospel According To Luke by the late New Testament Greek scholar A.T. Robertson (1836-1934) and newly revised with updated information by Wesley J. Perschbacher (D.Min., M.A., Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) offers impressive insights into the classical study of the New Testament gospel attributed to Luke, a first century Greek physician and Christian. Offering readers an easy-to-follow guide through the wisdom of the original Greek text, Word Pictures Of The New Testament: The Gospel According To Luke provides an intricate and knowledgeable study of Christian fundamentals and is a notable, "reader friendly" but scholarly reference for the ideas and ideals of this ancient scripture. Word Pictures Of The New Testament: The Gospel According To Luke is very highly recommended for all students, pastors, teachers, and lay readers of the Gospel of Luke for its all-inclusive and complete wisdom in both translation and theological study.

This is an innovative group portrait of Whitman's impassioned "disciples" (there is really no other word for them). It is restricted in scope to familiar figures who left us "copious letters and diaries and memoirs. . . All the disciples in this book are writers." Unfortunately, important allies who have gone begging in the existing Whitman biographies continue to go begging here--for example, Walt's right-hand man, Henry Clapp. With keen insight and a dedication to historical nuance, Robertson reassembles these ensemble actors against a freshly delineated backdrop. I must say, I learned something new and deeply satisfying in every chapter.

The key to the author's clarity is a willingness to avoid equivocation and to make concise assertions. That he succeeds for page after page is a measure of his uncommonly good judgment, and indeed, for the most part, the book runs like a well-kept engine firing on all cylinders. But the risk of being concise is to be reductionist. Take the treatment of spiritualism on page 10: "Unlike Spiritualism or Theosophy, Whitman's verse rejected all forms of supernaturalism, offering instead a pantheistic affirmation of the sacredness of the everyday." Obviously Robertson is essentially right about Walt's staunch insistence on the sacredness of the everyday. But Leaves of Grass was also a love letter to his potential allies in the abolitionist, free love, and suffragist movements, crafted to appeal to their spiritualist yearnings. One cannot succeed by seizing only one horn of the dilemma; we are constantly called to respond to Walt's own insistence that he contained contradictory multitudes.

Indeed, scholars in this field need to resist a rush to declare, "But Whitman was never X." Over the years, the various values of "X" have included "gay," "a Quaker," "a free lover," "a Bowery b'hoy," "a reformer," and, amazingly enough, even "a transcendentalist." On page 186, Robertson asserts that Whitman "steered clear of the American 'free love' movement." This may well have been true in 1889, but Whitman's famous Boston Commons debate with Emerson in 1860 can only be understood as Whitman's decision to throw his lot in with the antebellum Free Love movement--over the objections of his "Master."

Whitman's latter-day denunciations of the Free Love and Spiritualist movements are properly viewed as one among countless instances of his circle's deliberate historical revisionism. As shown by Ann Braude in Radical Spirits, the same kind of historical revisionism was simultaneously being conducted by that one historical figure whom I believe Whitman most resembles--the lesbian Quaker human-rights champion, Susan B. Anthony.

The ultimate test of the book is whether Robertson can fully portray the intense passion of these disciples without committing character assassination. (Even Walt was regularly, and deeply, embarrassed by Richard Maurice Bucke's view of the reformer-poet as a cosmic messiah.) This can be done, as shown by Artem Lozynsky in 1977; likewise, Worshipping Walt shows Robertson to have that singular degree of empathy and sophistication needed to do justice to this history.

What could possibly be more gripping than the mixture of eroticism, mysticism, scandal, faith, and ardent activism which characterized the nineteenth-century Whitman movement--heady passions which still motivate Whitman's partisans today, as Robertson shows. (In the interest of full disclosure, this writer is one of those mentioned as the modern equivalent of the "Whitmaniacs.")

The breathtaking climax of Worshipping Walt is actually tucked away as something of a throwaway in the middle of the chapter on Horace Traubel. Traubel, the bookish boy who grew to be Walt's principal torch-bearer, spent part of his life writing bad poetry. But his entire wrongheaded poetic career was redeemed by the single impassioned prayer-poem he wrote the day Walt died. It may be a minor criticism, but I regret that Robertson did not reserve this ecstatic utterance as his book's spectacular valedictory.

I view Worshipping Walt as a welcome turning point for the entire field--I see it as just that vital. Whether your interest is in the power of poetry, American Studies, the sociology of religion, radical reform, gay history, or Walt Whitman himself, start here; you'll be rewarded.

If I could find this book I would love to re-read it! Edwards delves into the mysteries of the shipwreck of a Dutch East Indiaman off the Western Australian coast in the 17th century. The author is a treasure-hunting scuba diver and gives an exciting personal account of his discovery. He also dives deeply into the personalties of those aboard whose character flaws and foibles caused the wreck. If you like being lost in history and love the sea this is your book

Défrichant un domaine peu connu, cet ouvrage inverse la problématique courante en montrant l'imprégnation de la grande littérature européenne par le yiddish et les résurgences de ce dernier, souvent inattendues. Excellent ouvrage dans non moins excellente collection

This book was recommended to me by a Yoga teacher when I was beginning Yoga and I wanted to do some additional practise at home. It is simple, easy to follow, well laid out with great photography of each asana. At the back there are some recommended practises using various asanas from the book, each practice takes approximately half an hour and as you improve you can string two or three together and taylor it to suit you. I highly recommend this book to anyone starting out with Yoga as well as those who are more advanced and want a guide to practise at home with.