Columbia Books

This is Chris Czajkowski's third book, and is written a little differently than her first two. Those two were written in chronological order, telling of events taking place over a set amount of time. This one is a collection of stories that take place over a longer period of time and are in not necessarily in any particular order.

In case you've never read any of her Czajkowski's books before, she lives in the British Columbia wilderness, a 2-4 day walk from a road or civilization. She makes her living hosting visitors who come to experience the beautiful Coast Mountains. Some of the stories in this book are about that, but she also tells of repeated bear break-ins, some of the hair-raising adventures experienced out on the trail, her dogs (who serve as both companions and pack animals), tracking down an elusive wildflower, attempting to raise an orphaned baby squirrel, and of course the wild weather that sometimes whips through the area.

As always, Chris tells her stories expertly. She is a good writer, and the fact that this book is true makes it all the more interesting. Whether or not the wilderness life appeals to you, these stories entertaining to read.

This book was billed as a "riveting adventure story" and a "heartfelt elegy to the true wilderness." While I wholeheartedly agree with the latter, the former is misleading. The author frequently mentions the romance of her chosen home and the book does focus on the notable events of her daily life. But if you're looking for one of those overblown life-or-death dramas, look elsewhere. She deals very realistically with the dangers inherent in her lifestyle. The brief but detailed descriptions of the world around her definitely can make you feel like you're right there. And the stories of events in her daily life, big and small, good and bad, can be riveting indeed but probably not to most.

The author obviously loves her life and her home. There is real beauty in the simple and honest portrayal of life in a remote area. If you've spent any time living near true wilderness, reading this book feels like sitting down in a cozy cabin with a stranger suddenly become friend and trading stories over a cup of tea. In short, I couldn't put it down.

Love buying my books online but browsing bookstores still can bring wonderful books to your attention. So thanks to the Paulina Book Company in Sisters, Oregon, for having this author's books and other carefully selected gems collected in one place. Her "Diary of a Wilderness Dweller" looks to be just as good and I'm hoping Amazon can track down her out of print titles. Highly recommend this author to anyone that likes quality books of this genre.

This book can be a dry read a t times, there is a lot of information in parts but it helps focus your observing of young children.

If for research or documentation you have the need to observe children, this book will serve as a detailed guide to that process. It includes recording routines, a children's use of materials, peer interaction, child-adult interaction, play, adult-directed behavior, language, and finding patterns.

THE OLD MAN WHO DOES AS HE PLEASES : Selections from the Poetry and Prose of Lu Yu. 126 pp. New York and London : Columbia University Press, 1973. ISBN 0-231-03766-X (hbk.)

Burton Watson has always struck me as an eminently civilized scholar and as a fine translator. Unlike certain others, he wears his scholarship lightly, and doesn't overburden the text with extraneous matter. His many translations from Chinese and Japanese Literature are of uniformly high quality, and are well worth having as they are books one often returns to.

Lu Yu (1125-1210) was an amazingly prolific poet, and left behind almost 10,000 poems as well as a variety of prose writings. His poetry is characterized by occasional spasms of intense patriotism, but mainly by a carefree enjoyment of life. Hence his literary name 'Fang-weng' or 'The old man who does as he pleases.' He adopted this name as a gesture of defiance after being dismissed from his official post for "drunkenness and irresponsibilty." This image of a lively and lovable old rascal is borne out by the poetry.

The present book offers a selection of sixty-three of Lu Yu's poems which provide us with glimpses of the poet's daily life. Here is a brief example, with my obliques added to indicate line breaks :

"My medicine's crude, yet the old farmer / swears it really works. / my poems are shallow, yet the mountain monk / has immoderate praise for their skill. / Cakes in pockets, with packets of tea / they come to pay me a visit. / What harm if in the midst of loneliness / we have one little laugh ? (p.59).

Besides the poems, Watson has also included translations of excerpts from Lu Yu's famous 'Diary of a trip to Shu' which was written in 1170 and describes the sights along the Grand Canal, the hair-raising experience of sailing through the Yangtze gorges, and the temples, shrines, and scenic spots he visited when travelling to take up the position of vice-governor of the province of K'uei-chou. This is a truly marvelous travel journal, and presents us with a vivid picture of life in central China in the twelfth century. Here is a brief passage selected at random which described an event Lu Yu witnessed in the Ch'ien-tao 6th year (1170 A.D.) 12th month :

"25th day : I watched the troops staging a mock battle on the water. There were seven hundred large warships, each ... fitted out with walls and turrets. Their flags and pennants shone brightly, their gongs and drums clattered and clanged as they raced back and forth, crashing through the huge waves as swiftly as though they had wings. Thirty or forty thousand people came to watch - it was in fact one of the most spectacular sights in the world" (p.100)

In addition to a typically interesting and informative Introduction, and his usual light annotations to all selections, Watson has also provided a useful map of 'Places Important in the Life of Lu Yu,' along with some bibliographical information. The book is small 8vo in size (6 by 8.5 inches), beautifully printed on excellent paper, stitched, and bound in full cloth.

Lu Yu was a unique and interesting figure, and anyone who cares for Chinese poetry in English is certain enjoy this book.

As a poet, Lu Yu goes a bit against the grain. Hardly the refined Taoist recluse type, there's something defiantly ordinary and down-to-earth about this man whose greatest unrealized ambition in life was to see his country stop piddling around and go to war already. Probably this guy was a real jerk--but an irresistibly likable one. A good bulk of his poems dwell on patriotic dreams of retaking North China from the Barbarian Chin, and, since this stance went against the official policy of the Southern Sung Dynasty, the rest of his poems dwell in loving detail on his everyday country life when out of a job as a government official. Almost as if to say, yeah, you fired me on trumped-up charges, but I'm doing fine here, thank you all the same. Even his literary name, the loose translation of which figures as the title of this book, evinces some of his defiance, delightfully incorporating the charges of drunken dereliction of duty used against him.

Of course, bombastically hawkish poems with preachy political themes, while convincingly sincere, tend not to weather the passage of centuries all that well even under the best of circumstances, and Lu Yu's seem especially bound to jar against contemporary poetic expectations and sensibilities. The opposite may be said of his irreverent homebody poems of simple everyday family life--these appeal directly to us across the intervening barriers of time, space, culture, and history; they feel more like real poetry to us. In which case the translator, Burton Watson, has struck a judicious balance between these two themes, including enough of the former that we get a proper and accurate sense of what Lu Yu's characteristic concerns were while somewhat favoring the latter ones we (and he, the translator, as he tells us outright) are more likely to enjoy as literature. And as always, with Watson the resulting translations are as close to a brilliant fusion of scholarly accuracy and literary quality as is perhaps humanly possible.

In addition to this modest sampling of Lu Yu's voluminous output of poems, Watson also includes a selective translation of Lu Yu's prose "Diary of a Trip to Shu" (about one third of the original). This seems a bit chopped up, okay for a generalist like me but probably a bit annoying for committed Sinologists. But one gets a vivid impression of the sights and sounds, the experiences and hardships of river travel as Lu Yu records the ups and downs of his trip. Here too we get a glimpse of a different, deeper Lu Yu with hints of an interest in Taoism. Usually poetry is the venue by which scholar officials such as Lu explored such concerns, but there's almost no hint of it in Lu's poetry at all. And then here of all places in a prosaic travel journal on the way to a government post it pops up unexpectedly. Lu Yu, just as he pleases, going against the grain to the very end.

A good, continually absorbing study of a contemporary though tradtional Japanese poet names Kodojin(d. 1943). The writing style holds one's interest throughout and the story of the poet's life along with his poems,paintings and drawings is always delightful and interesting. If you love Japanese haiku by such masters as Bassho and chinese poetry from the Tang you will find this study worthy of your attention. I have never read a book quite like it.

Translations of and commentary on one author's Taoist poems are presented in a warm blend of spiritual, religious and philosophical inspection which considers the last of the great poet-painters of Japan. Over 150 of his poems are treated to an appraisal which considers both form and content in a fine coverage worthy of inclusion in any strong Asian collection.

Olivia's Mine is a great story as well as a detailed look at early 20th century life in the North West. The reader is quickly drawn into a cast of engaging characters and copes along with them through disasters and personal struggles. The author's love of the local area is obvious. I definitely recommend it.

A delicious old-fashioned adventure, with suspense and romance, set in a historically accurate time and place, where a woman who doesn't always tipify her times, has to transcend numerous catastrophes. Delightful ...

Rather than giving us more "imaginary" scenarios of what "might be going on in the mind of a terrorist" (as if modern torture methods or any other methods could definitively uncover intentions - a witch hunt mentality), Talal Asad is asking the right questions. What makes terrorism so terrifying that it has to be labeled distinctively - rather, than say, a gun-wielding student running amok at a university, killing 30+ people and then himself? Why does the topic of suicide bombing cause overwhelming horror over and beyond the scope of other horrific acts by state armies or school shootings - the disproportionate maiming and killing of civillians, women and children from far range by modern military weapons? The author doesn't attempt to give simplistic answers and wave the problems away, nor does he apologetically defend any perpetrator of terror - individual dissident or modern government.

What he does is uncover the disturbing truth that the double standard exists in our media and liberal democracy discussions: as soon as a modern government labels a dissident regime or country or religious group as "barbaric" or "uncivilized", it gives itself the right to kill "their" citizens or attack "their" defenses just as it has been previously attacked. Where is the line crossed?

Very deep reading. The author touches on Islamic and Christian culture and compares and contrasts what living and dying mean in each. This was one of its strongest aspects. Once the ideas of living, dying, and sacrifice are understood in terms of a particular culture, only then can its stance on suicide or bombing or terrorism be correctly understood. Do proponents of terrorism or suicide bombing abide by the tenets of their religion or is it a subversion of their teachings? Or does it even depend on their circumstances or our reading of it as a foreign culture with the necessary misinterpretations? It is a highly engaging book and covers many more relevant and related areas. I am glad it covers a side of the issues that is sorely missing and needed and has been missing from the contemporary media and intellectuals/academics who, as usual, are like a flock of sheep, saying about terrorism and the Islamic world just what everyone else does.

This book based on the Wellek lectures at U.C. Irvine is the best book on the topic of suicide bombings. As the other reviewer stated, it's approach brings "depth" to the topic, especially an understanding of Islam and the Arabic language, both of which tend to be seen as insignificant not only in the mainstream press but also in academic circles. Asad demonstrates why cultural anthropology has contributions to make to a topic and a region dominated by political science with its biases in which meaning lies away from "the ground up" and for the people it presumes to represent.

Some highlights that struck me--Asad's point that suicide bombing is about histories and the fact that in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the history of Israeli expansion and Palestinian dispossession is always bracketed out, so that various kinds of political violence are abstracted from this political context. Another point he made is about the "West's" own "culture of death." I was very struck by his discussion of colonial and contemporary warfare waged by the West and the development of advanced weaponry designed to beat out at every turn surgical skill. Israel, prior to its departure from Lebanon last summer, left over cluster bombs AFTER the cessation of hostilities. There was no military point, no self-defense or security involved in that act. This act was aimed at a civilian population for no reason at all other than to maim and kill. The U.S. State Dept. "regrets" that Israel still hasn't turned over the maps that show where the cluster bombs were dropped, so that they can be safely disarmed. This is part of a culture of death in which beheadings are seen as more cruel than the machinations of the West's advanced weaponry, not because of any objective measure of "cruelty," but because non-Europeans do it to Europeans and their descendents.

The other point that Asad makes that I found profoundly intriguing was that in the West we impose a Christian understanding of martrydom--i.e.the crucifixion--onto public suicide bombings, but there is nothing redemptive about the suicide, so that leads Westerners to a problem in interpretation which we retreat from via righteous anger.

Asad doesn't try to pretend that the West is just obsessed with suicide bombings because of the media, although his quoting Mai Jayoussi on the I.D.F. figures which show that only 4% of attacks by Palestinians on Israelis are suicide bombings, was startling even to me, and I've lived and done research in the Occupied Territories. He takes on public suicides and shows how interpreting their meaning confounds assumptions in the West about the relationship between the state, the law, and public death.

One River Two Cultures: A History Of The Bella Coola Valley is a thoroughly researched historical account told in a friendly, narrative style of the beautiful Bella Coola Valley deep within the central coast wilderness of British Columbia. Black-and-white photographs illustrate this chronicle, which tells of the Nuxalkmc people whose culture was heavily intertwined with the natural and spiritual world; the drastic changes that came about when gold-seekers, traders, missionaries and a group of Norwegian settlers came; to modern-day conflicts concerning the land and the extent to which its resources should be consumed. Award-winning writer Paula Wild gathers the rich and complex story of the valley and the people who called it home into a smoothly flowing whole, that absorbs the reader from cover to cover. A superbly crafted regional history.

If you are interested in learning about a remote area of the BC Coast the book "One River, Two Cultures" is a good one to start with. I have visited the Bella Coola Valley and the author does a good job describing the natural surroundings of the Valley and the two cultures which exist there. The author includes conversations she had with current residents of Bella Coola who know the Valley well. These converstations are benificial in understanding the Valley.

This book flows well and is an easy read. I would recommend it to anyone who is planning to visit Bella Coola, has visited the Valley already or just wants to learn more about a fascinating region of British Columbia.

A series of powerful essays from an excellent and diverse range of writers including the initial ideas on resilience engineering. Covers issues of communications over the imagery requests well.

After two horrible disasters, do you think that NASA has learned from its mistakes, and that it will never happen again? If so, you need to read this book! In 18 well-written chapters, the editors have assembled a set of experts on organizations and disasters to analyze lessons from the Columbia disaster. Because the Challenger disaster foreshadowed many of the problems that subsequently turned up in official investigations of the Columbia disaster, it also figures heavily in this edited book. The authors demonstrate the analytic power of an historically informed organizational analysis of a large governmental agency under strong political pressure to produce results with limited resources.

Two points in particular caught my eye. First, after the Challenger disaster, NASA was supposedly reorganized to place greater emphasis on safety. However, because the organization began to define the space exploration program as a problem of meeting production goals and deadlines, "safety" never achieved the priority in the organization than it deserved. Instead of seeing the space shuttle program as a developmental one, exploring the risky frontier of technological knowledge, NASA officials treated it like any other flight program. Second, as anomalies continued to crop up after flights, engineers and officials began to think about deviations from acceptable practices and outcomes as "normal." As deviation was normalized, unusual events were taken for granted and didn't provoke the kind of response than one would expect from life threatening occurrences.

Scholars interested in organization studies, organizational learning, systems theory, and other academic disciplines will learn much from this book. However, one can also hope that public officials will take its lessons to heart and look more closely at the design of other risky systems that are operating close to the limits of our scientific knowledge.

Is it practical to study the origin of the universe and of life? I wish it were, so that I could offer an attractive class with a course description something like:

... Experimental Universe Construction (Astrobiology 404). We'll start by discovering how our Universe was created and use this information to build and use a machine that produces universes. After several trials lasting only a few billion years each during which we'll learn the ropes about being uniquely powerful, we'll decide which laws of nature and life-forms we like best and generate universes we'll enjoy far more than this one. And we'll just go on having fun forever. ...

Unfortunately, the closest I can come to this is (sigh) simply a class about the origins of life and the universe. And this short book is a very readable and informative introduction to the subject.

The book starts with a discussion of science and a characterization of life. Then there is an explanation of the differences between Newtonian physics, in which there are no limits on speeds, and Einsteinian physics, where nothing (not even gravity) can move faster than the speed of light. And we get an introduction to quantum mechanics and particle physics. After that is a short but clear summary of our present ideas of how elements were formed in the Big Bang and gave rise to galaxies with stars and planets.

Next, there is a description of DNA as it exists today. From there, we discuss metabolism and the role of ATP. That includes a mention of anaerobic metabolism, which is connected to the time when life existed on an Earth that lacked oxygen in its atmosphere. And Lurquin explains that simple forms of life can subsist on a diet of sunlight and minerals alone. Once life got started, it certainly had food!

Following this is a very interesting chapter about how the first informational organic molecules may have arisen. That includes information about organic molecules in interstellar clouds and meteorites as well as about synthesis of organics in the Earth's atmosphere and on the ocean floor. The author discusses the two main theories about how life originated: proteins first, in an iron-and-sulfide world, or RNA first, with the RNA producing the proteins. Lurquin mentions that the correct answer could be a little of each of these.

I liked the next chapter best of all, a discussion of how life might have proceeded from an RNA world to a DNA world and how the progression from proto-cells to eukaryotes may have taken place. The author then addresses the question of whether life exists (or has existed) elsewhere and whether life on Earth could have actually been brought here originally from, say, Mars. There are some concluding speculations about how long humans on Earth may last before we destroy ourselves in wars.

This is a well-written book and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in the subject.

I really enjoyed this clear sighted approach to the subject written for non-major undergraduates. It is a very clear and concise and level-headed discussion of the whole subject of the origin of life and the universe. I recommend it to all reasonably sophisticated readers.

This was a wonderful book. It examined Welles' career not in light of Citizen Kane but through his Shakespeare projects. This cast Welles in a very different light for me.

Welles tried to make Shakespeare accessible. To him, Shakespeare should not be something in a glass case at a museum. Thus he kept shaking up the Shakespeare plays he adapted. And critics hated him for it. His film of "Macbeth" in particular got raked over the coals.

The book shows how Shakespeare was regarded in American culture in the 20th Century and how Welles tried to shape that attitude. It is a slim book, but it gives the reader very much to think about in an accessible, jargon-free way.

Anyone interested in Shakespeare and Orson Welles will want to buy this extremely useful and unusually thoughtful book. It is quite compact and offers chapters on all of the Shakespeare films Welles made. Anderegg argues tht Welles sought to democratize Shakespeare through the use of mass media such as records, radio, and film. there's a wonderful opening chapter about an I Love Lucy episode with Welles and a stunning conclusion about Welles as a star author (Anderegg contrast him with Bertolt Brecht). The book is very well-written and very accesible. Ideal for classroom use.