Columbia Books

Acts of murder is an excellant book sure to grab even the most reluctant reader. Karl Alberg once again finds him self trying to piece together murders that seem unrelated, yet somehow, he suspects, they are all related. In this book, the lives of several different people, who for the most part do not know one another exist, are intertwined by one person. The cleaning lady has taken it upon her to punish the "sinners". Now, it's up to Karl Alberg and his new female sargent to piece this puzzle together.

After living together for many years, Staff Sargent Karl Alberg and Cassandra Mitchell marry. On that same day, a virus infects the townsfolk of Sechelt, Canada. It begins with the disappearance of a teenage girl, whose corpse was found in a shallow grave over a year later.

A young woman also vanishes after an ugly argument with her now worried spouse. Her body is found near the first body. A housewife thinks she kills her husband when she can no longer tolerate his infidelities. However, when she goes to dispose of the corpse, the body is missing. A waitress at the local diner turns up missing as well.Karl knows that he must uncover the identity of someone who is executing non-repenting sinners.

Laurali R. Wright, who is considered one of Canada's top mystery writers, is actually is one of the world's top crime authors. She is able to capture the mindset of the victims, perpetrators, and authorities with clarity rarely seen in novels. ACTS OF MURDER is actually three stories woven together by decade old actions. However, the book is very atmospheric, depending more on mood rather than action, and why rather than who. Ms. Wright may be in line for another Edgar with this terrific tale.

Harriet Klausner

I am a history teacher, a Jew, and a woman. This book showed a real respect and understanding of the Jewish women's role in the history of American culture. My grandmother also loves it.

This book was a genuinely original piece of research. I loved it. You can learn about Jews, about consumption, and about America. I was lucky enough to hear Dr. Heinze speak a few years ago on Jewish Women in America, and he (unlike many other writers on the subject) really understands the role of Jewish women - yesterday and today.

From back cover:

"'Aden, Arabie' is the story of a man who attempt to flee bourgeois life in France by seeking exoticism in the Middle East. His trip is a failure; the freedom of travel is exposed as an illusion. This account is base don Nizan's own trip to Arabia and has been resurrected through the efforts of Jean-Paul Sartre. In 'Aden, Arabie,' Nizan came to understand that everywhere - in Arabia as in France -oppressive forces drain us of our humanity."

Aden, Arabie is an important work of fiction that has been almost lost to the world because the author Paul Nizan broke with the Communist Party of France and he was consequently subjected to literary banishment. The book is a travelogue of sorts and is an intellectual treat as well that merges the exitentialist style of Camus with the wanderlust of Kerouac. The ending of his effort to discover himself by going to Aden find him returning to France where he is confronted with the sight of Notre Dame and Le Sante Prison -the two symbols of modern culture on opposite sides of the Seine River. It is a stark but beautiful masterpiece and a kick in the gut. A great novel.

You won't find many of the usual right wing nut jobs reviewing this book, because it is very hard to libel documentary evidence. In law, we say "res ipsa loquitor," or "the thing speaks for itself." And this book has delivered the goods: documentary evidence in spades. If you don't come away from this book convinced that at the very least there is a prima facie case for indicting the US military high command, up to and including the shrub and Darth Cheney, on charges of aggravated war crimes and crimes against humanity, then you just haven't paid attention, or, worse, you are part of that portion of humanity--Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pinochet, Pol Pot, etc.--that thinks there is nothing wrong with torture and that, in fact, we should use it more. If that is the case, you will find plenty to warm your heart here.

This book is a great collection of the records of the Bush administration's torture policy. Seeing as it is a collection of documents obtained through FOIA some of it is redacted. This redaction lends the book that air of "what are they trying to cover up." This book would be great for research.

The introduction sets it all out in a nice brief synopsis. Thus, this book has little author influence as to opinion. It allows you to see for yourself.

Besides Dr. Harold Bloom who I consider a mad literary genius there is Dr. Maurice Charney who is quite the expert on William Shakespeare and has written numerous books about him as well. This book does help break down the plays, characters and plots without overburdening the reader with too much information. If you need to know more about Shakespeare or the Bard as he is called, Dr. Charney is a great alternative to Bloom.

I think it was a great book. It really brings the real Shakespeare to life. It is one of the few books I can read again and again.

This book was written by a Japanese man who lived and studied in the United states just after 1900. He stayed in various places around the country such as the state of Washington, Kalamazoo, and New York, among others. His writing was some of the first in its time to shed light on actual American life to Japanese readers, who tended to idealize America as a perfect country (the Meiji period was an era of learning from other cultures in Japan). Kafu's writing shows the darkness of early modern American racism, prostitution, and poverty, and places it in beautifully eerie settings. It is sometimes made to offend and outrage readers. I found it to be extremely interesting to see America from an immigrant's point of view in a time when so many people were flooding into the States.

I generally find Nagai Kafu's fiction pretty interesting despite my usual tastes in literature. His lifelong fascination with the seedier side of life would turn me off if he were a lesser writer, but somehow he invests all of this with a melancholy lyricism while all the same not whitewashing or trivializing his subject matter. And with this excellent series of semi-autobiographical short stories Nagai, a fledging writer no less, has already got the knack for this balancing act, only here he's not roaming Asakusa or the Tokyo brothels but rather the back allies of New York or the immigrant slums of Seattle. It is fascinating both to see Nagai treat his familiar themes in an unfamiliar setting and to see turn-of-the-(last)-century America through his keen, attentive gaze...down to the nitty-gritty details even the newer kinds of social history can't quite reconstruct. That said, he's not a one-trick pony--one story deals with a wholesome relationship between the narrator's friend and the latter's fiance and comes complete with a scathing critique of rigid Confucian social mores, while another really nice story tells the tale of a beautiful but short-lived summer romance between the narrator and a strong-willed, intelligent young lady. And many of the stories address the complexities of racial relations, the ambiguity of modernity, the significance of the arts, and other such issues from interesting and thoughtful perspectives and in a manner that seldom seems strained. Whether your interest is in modern Japanese literature or modern American cultural history, you will find this book quite worth your while. And if you just want to read some good stories by a fine writer at the start of his promising career, well, you won't go wrong with this one either.

I really love Lone Pine field guides. Each book has its own style, but every Lone Pine guide I've read, including this one, has more than just identification tools - they actually teach you about the species they describe. That being said, the keys included in this book are very helpful - no matter how great the pictures, salamanders still confuse me. However, the key included makes it easy to identify a salamander (assuming you get more than a fleeting glance) or frog. Another hit for Lone Pine.

No scaley 'ol reptiles here! Just everything and more that you frog and salamander hobbyists want to know. Great quality color photos throughout, and book is organized so it is easily referred to again and again. I was especially impressed with the identification keys, photos and illustrations of egg, tadpole and juvenile (as well as adult) forms of most species.
Much of the information is applicable to the rest of the United States. This book just knocked my socks off--and I collect books on amphibians!

The concept of "anarchy" has enjoyed a privileged status in each of the two main schools of thought of IR, namely neorealism and neoliberalism -albeit in varying size and nature. I have always believed that this overemphasis on anarchy was unjustified and misleading. I think what is important is not the mere presence or absence of a governmental body at the international level, but rather whether any mechanism exists that functions against Waltz's assertion that "wars occur because there is nothing that prevents them" (1959, 232). In our modern global world, no state except the hegemon can get away with a "fait accompli" that will change regional of global balances of power. This simply means that every state except one has an "impediment" to behave like a "rogue" state. Thus, the absence of a material world government to punish the deviant states does not necessarily create an anarchic international environment, because the practical function of such a government is fulfilled to a large extent by the hierarchical nature of the international system. This is true for multipolar systems where there is a balance of power among major states as well. Throughout modern history, each state that sought a global hegemony found a community of others against her. Thus, balance of power has indeed been an ordering principle in international relations.

I found my inspiration as to the "order" in the international system in the writings of some British scholars. Contrary to the central place of anarchy in the North American theories of international relations, "international society" thinking and its resultant emphasis on "order" has been a tradition in post-war Britain. "The English School" argued that there is a persistent order in the international system alongside "anarchy" and that the preservation of a minimal order has been a common objective of the major members of the international system. Hedley Bull was one of the most influential scholars within the English School. In his The Anarchical Society he defines order in international system as "a pattern or activity that sustains the elementary or primary goals of the society of states," (p. 8). In further elaboration, he lists these goals as 1) the preservation of the system and society of states itself, 2) maintaining the sovereignty of states, 3) maintaining peace, and 4) sustaining the elementary goals of the individual, i.e. life, truth, and property (pp. 16-18). He argues that the maintenance of order is a common goal of states, because -whatever the further goals of states- the existence of a minimal order is a necessary condition to achieve these higher goals. Like individuals, states value order because they value "the greater predictability of human behavior" that comes as the consequence of conformity to the elementary or primary goals of states (p. 7).
According to Bull, "balance of power" is the primary and most effective instrument for the maintenance of international order. It is primary, because it provides the conditions in which other institutions of order (diplomacy, war, international law, and great power management) have been able to operate; it is the most effective, because by preventing the emergence of a hegemon, balance of power helps preserve the existent order.
Two of the instruments that Bull argues states use to preserve international order are particularly interesting. First, Bull directs our attention to the positive functions of war with respect to the maintenance of order. While in the traditional IR literature war is associated with conflict and disorder, Bull argues that war has widely been used by states (in particular the great powers) as a means of enforcing international law and preserving balance of power (p. 102). Thus, for Bull, war is a two-faceted phenomenon: a threat to be limited in most cases, but also an instrument to be used for order-related purposes in some cases. Second, he contends that great power politics contribute to the preservation of international order as well. Bull argues that great powers do so by preserving the general balance of power, avoiding major crisis among themselves, and respecting each other's "spheres of influences" (p. 200). In that respect, the English school warns us that the great power politics is not a wholly "tragic" story.
I think The Anarchical Society made two important contributions to our understanding of international politics. First, it persuasively argued that we are not living in an international "jungle". In Bull's (and my own) view, anarchy is an element of international structure, but neither the only nor the predominant one. States purposively try to limit the negative effects of anarchy by working together to preserve a minimal level of order in order to attain higher objectives. Second, Bull helped us realize that some crucial elements of international politics -war and great power politics-, which are generally associated with conflict, many times play positive roles in terms of the preservation of international order.
An important shortcoming in Bull's approach is that Bull remains quite when it comes to the "nature" of international order. The question of what causes the emergence of different international orders is outside the scope of The Anarchical Society. Actually, Bull admits this point when he says that "we are concerned only with what may be called the `statics' of international order and not with its `dynamics'," (19). Hence, Bull does not offer us a "theory" of international relations.

It was wonderful. I've never read something like that. I advise everyone to read it. Thank you.

This is the vocal score for the Broadway Musical. It also includes the Overture and incidental music. The copy I purchased arrived in mint condition - still in the original packaging!

This was a really great book. It's about a young girl,Annie, who is an orphan along with 5 other girls, Molly, Tessie, Pepper, July, and Duffy. Annie trys to run away when Miss Hannigan the orphange's owner gives the girls a punishment to clean the dump till it shines like the top of the Chrysler Building. I don't to tell you the rest of the story because I don't want to give away the ending. This is a great book and I hope you like it as much as I do.

When most of us think of the 1920s, we envision scenes from the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald or remember passages from old jazz recordings. What Professor Carter has done is to go beyond revisonism and present a more holistic portrait of that decade. He discusses the roles of science, democracy, and religion in the lives of Americans across the country, not just in select cities and towns. He also examines economic issues, from prohibition to developments and advances in advertising. Carter's history is told from the point of view of the middle and working classes, dispelling the myth of another icon of that era, Horatio Alger.

This is a wonderful book about a tough period in our history, the 20's. It shows many hardships that the people went through, even though it was a "golden" age. I am a history teacher that thought he knew everything about the 20's. This book offered me insights that I had never known about. It was a great book and I would recommend it to anyone.