Wang Books

Baldwin's Flush Times is a great historical resource. Baldwin paints an interesting tale of frontier Alabama and Mississippi and the characters which lived in the region. Overall, a great illustration of the American frontier and the Jacksonian era.

The debate over how to create an efficient system of government without sacrificing the sacred rights of the individual; how to make government serve society and advance its "general welfare" with a degree of competence while still harboring deep suspicions about the inherent unbound power of government per se. How three million people (only about 60% of them even literate let alone well-read) could produce writing of such informed elegance and tight logic is one of the mysteries and miracles of history. Reading these essays and then listening to the poll constrained mutterings of modern politicians world over is like first soaring along at a hundred miles an hour and then hitting a giant sludge puddle. The principles debated here have never been more relevant to the human condition. Would that this book be translated into Hebrew and made compulsory reading for the modern Israeli politician. I discuss some of these issues in my own book "The Optimistic Jew: a Positive Vision for the Jewish People in the 21st Century".

I purchased this book for my African & African American Literature class and it is fantastic. The readings are very diverse and help to increase your understanding and awareness of Black Culture.

This book is packed full of valuable insights and stories enriching one's understanding of diversity and the way it has been interpreted by Americans through the mid-19th century. As a college professor of history myself, I find the book an incomparable resource for adding to my knowledge and looking at various problems through different lenses. So many books simply tell the same story; Countryman's book is outstanding in its perspective of trying to look at our history through the lenses of women, native and African Americans in intriguing ways. The book makes me think, and I keep going back to it. For example, on the Revolution itself, he asks the question of what the consequences of the decision of which side to support were for Native Americans, for slaves, and for loyalist men and women. I highly recommend the book for anyone interested in U.S, History. It is written very well, with anecdotal evidence and a fresh perspective.

This book was assigned in my "Introduction to Theater" class, and I found myself highlighting sentence after sentence. This book offers a very unique appreciation of theater, dwelling on theater's combination of fantasy and reality. You can read through this book in an afternoon, but you will want to return to it again and again.

On the day Angels Fall takes place, all roads in a remote northeast corner of New Mexico are closed because of a nuclear accident at a nearby uranium mine. Four very different confused people find themselves confined to the sanctuary of a quiet sunbaked mission, where they find Frather Doherty, the mission priest, and Don Tabaha, a young Indian, his unofficial foster son and helper. Together thay act out "what is a rehearsal for the end of the world" and face the problem of "what manner of person' each will be. Julius Novick, writing in the Village Voice, commented: "Mr Wilsom has dramatized their interactions so deftly, and Marshall W. Mason has directed such a full and mellow production, that Angels Fall is a warm, funny, touching, highly satisfying theatrical evening ... Mr. Wilson characters - most of them, anyway - have their own voices, their own way of speaking, feeling, being. They're there. They're themselves. They cast shadows. They draw you in."
--- from book's back cover

A play for four men and two women. From the book's dustjacket:

On the day Angels Fall takes place, all roads in a remote nothwest corner of New Mexico are closed because of a nuclear accident at a nearby uranium mine. Four very different confused people find themselves confines to the sanctuary of a quiet sunbaked mission, where they meet father doherty, the mission priest, and don tabaha, a young Indian, his unofficial foster son and helper. Together they act out what is a "rehearsal for the end of the world" and face the problem of "what manner of person" each will be.

For anybody who seeks a new, critical angle to re-evaluate the May Fourth tradition and legacy of China, this book is a must-read. It largely contextualizes and historisizes the May Fourth discourse.

I read these works for a graduate seminar on Aristotle.
Poetry appeals to human passions and emotions. Powerful beautiful language and metaphor really appeal to emotion. This idea really disturbed Plato, who takes on Homer in the Republic. Plato thought that early Greek poetry portrays a dark world; humans are checked by negative limits like death. Tragedy has in it a character of high status brought down through no fault of his own. Plato says this is unjust. Republic is about ethical life and justice. It starts with the premises that might makes right and then moves onto the idea much like modern religions that justice comes in the afterlife. Plato hates the idea that in tragedy bad things can happen to good people. He wanted to ban tragedy because he found it demoralizing.

Aristotle's Poetics is a defense against Plato's appeal to ban tragedy. Tragedy was very popular in Greek world so Aristotle asks can it be wrong to ban it? Yes, it is wrong thus he decides to study it. Plato says Poetry is not a technç because the poets are divinely inspired. Aristotle disagrees Poetics is a handbook for playwrights. Mimçsis= "representation or imitation." Plato uses it in speaking of painting, thus art is imitation. Another meaning is to mimic, like actors mimicking another person. Plato and Aristotle use it to mean psychological identification like how we get absorbed in a movie as if the action were real, eliciting emotions from us. We suspend reality for a while. Aristotle says this is natural in humans; we do this as children, we mimic. If imitation is important for humans then tragic poetry is worthwhile for Aristotle to study.

Definition of tragedy- "Through pity and fear it achieves purification from such feelings. This is a famous controversial line. Katharsis= "pity and fear" thus the purpose of tragedy is to purge katharsis. Katharsis can also mean purification or clean. There is a debate if it means clarification, through which we can come to understand katharsis. Aristotle thinks tragedy teaches us something about life. Tragedy is an elaboration on Aristotle's idea that good or virtuous people sometimes get unlucky and in the end, they get screwed. Tragedy shows this so we can learn to get by when life screws us. The whole point of tragedy is action over character. Action is the full story of the poem like the Iliad. Character is only part of the action.
Aristotle distinguishes between poetry and history. Poetry is concerned with universals, history is concerned with particulars.

I recommend Aristotle's works to anyone interested in obtaining a classical education, and those interested in philosophy. Aristotle is one of the most important philosophers and the standard that all others must be judged by.

great book Arnold I vote fot you Helga loses Arnold wins

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!