Columbia Books

This book portrays in wonderful pictures and words the true heart of Columbia. The book captures all major as well as minor sites and events as well as the feel of Columbia. Columbia has a rich tradition from the founding of our Nation through the Civil War up to the modern era of the internet. The people and places are acurately represented. The book looks at South Carolina's capital from a variety of angles. It covers the Universtiy of South Carolina, one of the Nations oldest public universities and a corner stone of Columbia's soul. It touches on the state government which is the foundation of the city. Ms. McGrane captures the city beautifully with a myriad of fine photographs. Columbia's wonderful outdoor life is realistically portrayed for all to view. For those from the south, and certainly those from South Carolina, this book hits the bullseye.

This book is essential for the study of Complex Variables, and it is compatible with other texts on the subject. The sections on how to solve complex contour integrals and Laurent Series are especially important since most texts do not provide enough worked examples to give the student an idea of the underlying patterns involved. The section on the use of Residue theory to solve real valued integrals is also very well done. "Complex Variables Problem Solver" is another fantastic product from the folks at REA.

Text books on complex variables DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH WORKED PROBLEMS. This 900+ page softcover does. If you study "Visual Complex Analysis" by Needham (one of my favorites) this will help you do the exercises. The 24 chapters cover everything you would find in a one year course and then some. Each chapter is just one solved problem after another. I found a few misprints but nothing serious. You won't find a better resource and cheap too ! Highly recommended.

I've read sections of this book during the past 2.5 years at a library in northern Jersey. Dr. Abrahamsen's psychoanalytic dissection of Berkowitz is intriguing. I highly recommend this volume to anyone who has been following the Son of Sam story. Interestingly, there is no reference to the existence of an occult conspiratorial group in this book. In "The Ultimate Evil", this theory is postulated and the supporting evidence is outlined. As a result, I would advise the serious investigator of the Son of Sam story to read both books; one tome deals with the development of a psychopathic personality while the other deals with Berkowitz's involvement with an underground occult group exhibiting violent tendencies.

First off, I did not pay this outrageous price. I ordered one off of a rare-book site for eight bucks. I have another half to read, but I have been so engrossed. It is a must have for any true crime buff or student of psychology. It isn't the same narrative about David Berkowitz; rather; it tries to explain what caused him to become the famed serial killer that stalked New Yorkers in the late 70's. It explains the rough childhood, his learning he was adopted, the crushing blow of learning his true parents didn't want him and, without a doubt, the most fascinating part: STALKING. It is terrifying. He tells of other people he wounded in attempted murders, people who escaped being murderd, and the crimes that placed him behind bars. I strongly reccomend this book (I ALSO RECCOMEND THAT YOU TRY TO GET TIM CAHILL'S BURIED DREAMS, ABOUT GACY. IT IS JUST AS FASCINATING).

If you want to understand something about the nature of Adorno's overall project, read the guy below, sadly cut off as he is in mid-sentence. If your only contact with Adorno is the bitter "Minima Moralia" or the (to me) rebarbative "Negative Dialectics", this is an essential complement. If you aren't interested in radical cultural criticism...er, why are you reading this?

Critical Models is a collection of essays, articles and radio talks, mostly from quite late in Adorno's career. I am neither a philosopher nor an academic, and would be the first person to admit that I'm not quite up to Adorno's more Hegelian moments. I'm just casting about for help in an increasingly bland, homogenised, uncritical cultural environment, and the best thing about Critical Models is that it's Adorno being unusually _helpful_.

This is Adorno throwing himself into the task of trying to build a post-war democracy in Germany, not Adorno the cantankerous emigre complaining that doors shut more violently than they used to. He urges the value of promoting the status of teachers, of rooting out and criticising Nazi attitudes (who'd have thought that they'd still be flourishing fifty years on). Adorno is seldom a very approachable writer, but here he's making the effort to communicate to a mass audience, and to a relatively uneducated schmuck like me it's critical dynamite. The spine of my copy of Negative Dialectics may remain forever uncreased, but this one will be carried around.

It is important to point out that Teddie Adorno is spinning in his grave, for the very venue on which I am reviewing Critical Models is itself an example of the fetishized, reified and administered world that Adorno named, and critiqued. However, Adorno's philosophical tradition also includes the catchphrase what is, is right, and would probably view the Internet as more or less a necessary consequence of vast economic forces which it would be simple minded to simply ignore, or negate. And, his "dialectical" logic not only permits us to log on and praise him where praise is due: it requires us to do so.

This collection is of essays written after Adorno returned to the Federal Republic of Germany in the early 1950s. Because culturally Adorno was "very German" and indeed he resented the *Volkische* definition of Germanness imposed by Hitler, Adorno delayed his escape, as the son of a Jewish father and Catholic mother, from Hitlerdom to a dangerous point. He resided briefly in England and somewhat longer in America. Strangely, he did not like England and (given the choice) preferred America, and specifically California, the latter because of its climate.

This collection makes it clear that although Adorno was critical of many tendencies in America he was by no means knee-jerk in his criticism. Adorno enjoyed the very real democracy of American life and the very real empiricism of science as practised here...insofar as democracy and empiricism did not become, as a very different sort of emigre might call it, a shtick, or a number: or, as Adorno would call it, fetishized or reified.

But it is clear from these essays that Adorno would be very critical of changes in America that have occured since my generation, that of the immediate post-war Baby Boom, has taken over the shop. Adorno's work on Fascist tendencies in California, for example, located Fascism in our hearts and at our dinner tables. These tendencies are denied in ceremonies (such as the commemoration, last week, of the bombing in Oklahoma City) which are structured by press and lawyers in a way that fully denies anything like a spontaneous response.

One naturally wonders why it is that people at these commemorations, which memorialize real pain that should never be repeated, have to act in such structured fashions, and it was the structuring of Timothy McVeigh's life by similar tendencies that caused him, in all probability, to bomb the Murragh building.

It was irresponsible to decry social research that located Fascist and authoritarian tendencies so close to home and to expect no incidents such as the bombing of the Oklahoma City building. Adorno's work is a reminder to examine our own environment for barbarism, and Americans who have worked on issues of domestic abuse are in his tradition, even if they would actually find the guy irritating, arrogant and conceited...all of which he was.

Some of the book does require, because of Adorno's arrogance, a knowledge of German philosophy, which is not a laugh a minute by any means. The essay "On Subject and Object", for example, may be completely opaque, even to, and especially to, the "educated" reader if her education is in the typical American university. That's because what we mean by the subject may be divergent from what Ted meant, a difference expressed by our own "catchphrase", "that's subjective."

"That's subjective" means in ordinary usage that "that" can be dismissed, and despite the (laudable) place that mere listening plays in our life, "that's subjective" forecloses listening. Adorno writes from a tradition in which subjectivity is not a sink and instead is a source of value.

The surprising end of "on subject and object" is one in which the mere subject acquires value precisely by being removed from a place of origin: we realize, in the general murk of Adorno's style, that the very reason why we exhibit a false humility about our own subjectivity is that we are delivered a false story about our origins as "the first man", which exalts the subjectivity of a mythical Adam, and makes our own second-hand. Adorno makes the common sense point that given our initial resources (which are inferior, because less specialized, than those of other large mammals) "the first man" was probably the group, in which the "subjectivity" of each member had to be (paradoxically enough) treasured because it was a group resource.

The experience of reading the more difficult essays is one of struggle, and reward, in which one realizes that one's mere failure to comprehend is only in part a product of ignorance: it is one of dawn. This is in contrast to reading the typical American scholarly essay in which the very lack of participation and struggle...and the airy dismissal of important questions as marginalia, drives questions to the zone of the subconscious.

That is, Adorno is outside of the tradition which recast and rephrased problems into such a shape that they could be solved...that their solution was implied by their clear phrasing. Mathematics is an example of this. At its best (and Adorno conceded this in many ways) this tradition is a source of both power and democracy.

At its worst, however, and especially as applied to Adorno's own field of social research, this tradition makes people into objects precisely because it has to ignore the philosopher's tendency to delay, by questioning everything. The most obscene consequence of this is the political poll and its unstated influence on our elections.

Like Adorno's longer works but more accessibly, Critical Models rewards reading, and rereading: the very density of his style provides, in terms that would make the guy shudder, good value for the dollar...precisely because, as

I really wanted to read this book but it arrived in total spanish. I guess because I live in Argentina everyone supposes I speak Spanish. Well I do not. So I gave this wonderful book away and still hope on day to read it in enlish.

Olga is an excellente writter and she has very honest point of view.

Bill Wolversten in this, the last in a three-volume guide to Cruising the British Columbia waters, does again a great job helping both the "Yachties" and the "Sporties" find the best places to spend an enjoyable time in BC. Bill offers a foundation of answers to: Where is it? How do I get there? and What is there? For enjoyment, he seasons this solid information with historical background and local knowledge. And finally, in case you didn't get the message from the text that Canada's BC is one of the world's best cruising ground, he drives the point home with stunningly beautiful pictures of the area. For anybody venturing into British Columbia in a pleasure boat, this book is a must-add to your collection of cruising guides.

Bill Wolversten in this, the first in a three-volume guide to Cruising the British Columbia waters, does a great job helping both the "Yachties" and the "Sporties" find the best places to spend an enjoyable time in BC. Bill offers a foundation of answers to: Where is it? How do I get there? and What is there? For enjoyment, he seasons this solid information with historical background and local knowledge. And finally, in case you didn't get the message from the text that Canada's BC is one of the world's best cruising ground, he drives the point home with stunningly beautiful pictures of the area. For anybody venturing into British Columbia in a pleasure boat, this and the other two books in the series are a must-add to your collection of cruising guides.

Raymond Williams discusses how the idea of "culture" and "society" evolved in England when two forces (democracy, industrialism) were undermining traditional notions of both. Williams is a Marxist and it is clear that his analysis of Burke, Coleridge, Mill, Carlyle, Newman, Arnold etc... is directed by Marx's theory of class relationships. The book, therefore, is both an analysis and an argument.

The analysis/argument is that democracy and industrialism broke down old relationships and initiated new ones. While this shift was occuring a new kind of writer was born: the cultural critic. The major theme of this book is the evolution of the word "culture" . Before the period in question (1780-1950) the word "culture" was used to describe art and literature but beginning with Burke and Coleridge the word begins to be used to refer to a "whole way of life". Coleridge makes the key distinction between "civilization" and "culture". Coleridge uses the word "civilization" to describe the "general progress of society" and he uses the word "culture" to express a standard of perfection independent of the progress of society that could be used "not merely to influence society but to judge it." Coleridge envisioned a class of men or "clerisy" whose sole task would be to tend to the cultivation of society. The great fear in the minds of nineteenth-century educated Englishman was that democracy would lead to a dumming down of public life and that what society really needed was some class of educated individuals(Coleridge) or some heroic individual (Carlyle) to insure the continued cultivation of society.
Raymond Williams is writing from a working-class perspective but he is a working-class kid who also happened to attend Cambridge. Writing from this unique perspective allows him to identify with both the great cultural thinkers of the past and with the "masses" that they feared. Coleridge and Carlyle felt that the masses were incapable of governing themselves and contributing to the continued cultivation of society(a notion that continues to inform much of modern conservastism). Williams suggests that it is a mistake to think of men as "masses" and that for society to grow it must remain open, and that society must encourage individual effort from all segments of society while continuing to value and cultivate a collective way of life. Exactly how society is to do this is explained only in vague platitudes.

The best and strongest part of the book is the early portion that examines the definition of "culture" as opposed to "society". The argument gets fuzzy around the time of Matthew Arnold who could not quite decide just what constitutes "culture". In the nineteenth-century "culture" is tied to religious tradition in the minds of Burke, Coleridge, Carlyle and Newman. Beginning with Arnold, however, cultural critics attempt to define "culture" without reference to religion. This proves to be difficult as "culture" describes not only all the best that has been thought but also refers to a body of values that have been passed down and religious institutions are just as powerful, if not moreso, than economic institutions. It is at this point when one begins to question the materialist approach to history.

In his conclusion Williams discusses democracy as if it were the natural substitute for religion or even a new kind of religion. He is not altogether successful and for me the concluding chapters were much less satisfying as cultural history than were the early chapters. This does not take away from the exceptional clarity of those early chapters.

The book is an excellent study of what it means to live in a world in transition and how difficult it is to properly define a "common culture" in a world that regularly undergoes cultural shifts. Society struggles on between two cultural ideologies; between the religious conservatives and the liberal-democrat reformers. In the best portion of Culture and Society Williams describes how J.S. Mill tried to find some way of melding the two ideologies into one.

Williams examines the development of the English novel (and the language itself) as a means to socio-political criticism. The section on the Romantic Period is excellent, as are the sections on Eliot and Orwell. This isn't your typical "critical theory" work: Williams doesn't use the ridiculous theoretical schemes often found in the field. Also, while his analysis is ultimately radical left, Williams remains undogmatic and clear-headed throughout (also a rarity), attributable in part I think to his working class background (this is really one of the themes of the work itself - upper middle-class liberalism and "radicalism" versus working-class radicalism).

Don't be put off by the claim that this is a "materialist analysis." Yes, he describes the creation of the author as the result of an economic/social process, but this isn't the main thrust of the work.

If nothing else, read this book for Williams's sensitivity to the origins and meanings of the "keywords" of the English language.

In general, I am not particularly fond of books that explain physical concepts in this format. Through coversations with Newton, Einstein, and a fictional physicist named Haller we are given the priviledge of learning the basics of newtonian gravity, the special and general relativity, the standard model, and cosmology.

Once I started reading the book I could not put it down. The real gems are found in passages that explain the concepts of the metric and spacetime cuvature. I also found the chapter on the origin of mass particularly interesting.

I rate this material five stars because the conversational style of Dr. Fritzsch's book worked eceptionally well in this case. I wholeheartedly recommend this book.

Although this book is a general public level presentation in the fields of special and general relativity, it reads like a novel, presents many historically accurate facts about the lives of two famous individuals - Albert Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton - and presents the material in an extraordinarily understandable manner.
A good comparison would be the popular work of Stephen Hawking, albeit with a little more math than most of Hawking's.
All in all, an enjoyable read and an easy way to increase one's comprehension of several difficult concepts.
John Brady

very thought provoking and well written

Prof. Schweller deserves all the compliments that he might get. "Deadly Imbalances" is a real masterpiece, poisedly merging theoretical discussion with an accurate applied analysis on an empirical case (World War II). The author's modeling departs from Waltz's neorealism, but the structural perspective is soon amended, with the inclusion of one variable that is strictly on the unit level (the state's interest). This modification approximates his scheme to classical realism, with great gains to ad hoc analysis, like the one he does. Important to say that the historical research is very good too, remarkable in a study done by a political scientist. This book should be considered a good and commendable example of case study in the International Relations area.

Extremely well written and filled to the brim with usefull information concerning the War and all that you always wanted to know (and more). Black and white photographs and a bibiography help anyone wanting to learn more.

Vance's examination of post-WWI Canadian experience, and the role of religious and spiritual beliefs in endorsing the trauma of the Great War, is first class. An interesting book to contrast with that other classic, Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, but Vance is a better examination of the Great War from a Canadian perspective. Highly recommended for military historians and enthusiasts looking for a fresh perspective on the impact of the Great War on society.