Columbia Books

Delbanco is a master! Every word carefully chosen, every phrase artfully assembled. His ability to evoke an image, thought, sensation is remarkable. This little book is not just about travel to foreign lands, scribbling, and sickness; but about the very personal self-discovery such activities could engender.

very highly recommended

Terry Castle writes with irreverence, responsibility, and respect for the role of lesbians in the arts. I should say the neglected role, because many of us had not ever heard of these writers and characters before. Read this, and then buy the books by the discussed authors in this text as I did, and you will be presently surprised.We need more research and writing like this in the world.

Already recognized since 1949 as "a masterpiece in scholarship" in its field by several eminent architects, the 173 page tome: ARCHITECTURAL PRINCIPLES IN THE AGE OF HUMANISM, 4th ed. (1971) by Rudolf Wittkower; had, incidentally, also provided an in-depth explanation on proportion and ratio as they differed in usage between architectural procedure and Boethian mathematics.
Of special importance is part four 'The Problem of Harmonic Proportion in Architecture' (p. 101) where the author made the salient point that "Although the Pythagoreo-Platonic concept of the numerical ratios of the musical scale never disappeared from mediaeval [sic], theological, philosophical, and aesthetic thought, there was no over-riding need to apply them to art and architecture" (p. 159).

Rudolf Wittkower unknowingly provided in part four the distinction between an elite Quadrivium education containing Boethian "mathematical arts" while "the 'liberal arts' of painting, sculpture, and architecture were regarded as manual occupations" (p. 117). The author explained "That the high Renaissance architects shunned theory" and "that they were practitioners rather than thinkers" (p. 30). And further "Italian architects strove for an easily perceptible ratio between length, height, and depth" (p. 74). So then according to this author, all of the Renaissance architects conception of architecture was based on a "commensurability of ratios" (p. 108).

Rudolf Wittkower indicated "that the [Renaissance] architect is by no means free to apply to a building a system of ratios of his own choosing, that the ratios have to comply with conceptions of a higher order and that a building should mirror the proportions of the human body" (p. 101). In developing the centrally planned church, Renaissance architects faced the dilemma of the pragmatics of church construction combined with the belief in divinity and the acceptance of Roman Catholic dogma.

The Church was to provide the "easily perceptible ratio" with the simple logic that "As man is the image of God and the proportions of his body are produced by divine will, so the proportions in architecture have to embrace and express the cosmic order" (p. 101). That cosmic order and harmony are contained in certain numbers Plato explained in his TIMAEUS.

Assigned to the architects, a Quadrivium trained Roman Catholic friar and musical theorist, Franchino Gaffurio (1451-1522) "in a truly Platonic spirit he regarded this principle of harmony as the basis of macrocosm and microcosm, body and soul, painting, architecture, and medicine" (p. 124). It was under this famous Renaissance musical theorist in 1525 that "the old belief in the mysterious efficacy of certain numbers and ratios was given new impetus" (p. 102). "It was Pythagoras who discovered that tones can be measured in space. What he found was that musical consonances were determined by the ratios of small whole numbers. If two strings are made to vibrate under the same conditions, one being half the length of the other, the pitch of the shorter string will be one octave (diapason) above that of the larger one" (p. 102). "Thus the consonances, on which the Greek musical system was based - octave, fifth, and fourth - can be expressed by the progression 1:2:3:4. One can understand that this staggering discovery made people believe that they had seized upon the mysterious harmony which pervades the universe" (p. 103).

"The musical consonances are determined by the mean proportionals; for that the three means constitute all the intervals of the musical scale had been shown in the TIMAEUS. Classical writers on musical theory discussed this point at great length. An exhaustive exposition is to be found in Boethius' DE MUSICA, first printed in Venice in 1491-92, and of very great importance for the doctrine of numbers throughout the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance" (p. 111).

Yet Boethius's DE MUSICA was de-emphasized by Renaissance architects in recognition that the "harmony of the universe which Plato had described in the TIMAEUS on the basis of Pythagora's discovery of the ratios of musical consonances" prompted the "application of Pythagoreo-Platonic system of harmonic ratios directly to architecture" (p. 125). As it turned out (not surprisingly) "Gafurio [sic] was regarded by his contemporaries as a critic in architectural matters" (p. 125).

The author of ARCHITECTURAL PRINCIPLES IN THE AGE OF HUMANISM provided the evidence that although the Quadrivium of the mathematical arts of music, astronomy, geometry, and Boethian proportion and ratio, was known to the Renaissance high architects, they preferred the 'harmonic proportion'; 'proportion of excess'; and the 'proportio proportionum'; derived directly from Plato's TIMAEUS and Pythagoras's three means (arithmetic, geometric, and the harmonic) over Boethius's DE MUSICA, though it was a substantial part of friar Gaffurio's ecclesiastical education. This resulted in "proportionally integrated 'spatial mathematics', which we have recognized as a distinguishing feature of humanist Renaissance architecture" (p. 26).

In comparison, for the practical application of Boethian proportion and ratios, please read: THE PHILOSOPHER'S GAME (2001) by Dr. Ann E. Moyer, where the rules of Boethian proportion found in rithmomachia, had been clearly defined, though inadvertently, by Rudolf Wittkower.

The book came quickly. I was very pleased. Thank you very much.

Arthropods are one of the most diverse and long-lived phyla in the animal kingdom. Their origins date back to the pre-Cambrian, and over the decades that they have been studied, they have generated controversy that persists to the present and will likely extend into the future. Yet this controversy is not fueled by idle speculation, but by the sometimes-bewildering complexity of arthropod diversity, both in the living representatives and in the fossil record. This book delves into the analyses of molecular, morphological, and paleontological data, and allows the critical reader to assess the disparate conclusions of the leading arthropod systematists. At the same time, the spotlight chapters on celebrated fossil arthropod sites (such as the Burgess Shales, the Chengjiang site, and others, allow a focus on the early diversification of Arthropod groups, as well as lobopods and the earliest crustaceans. Many illustrations and charts add interest to this challenging book. If you want more than a cursory exposure to Arthropod evolution. This is the book for you!

This brilliant essay, wich won in Spain the prestigious Anagrama Prize, was writting by Eugenio Trias, the only spaniard philosopher who won Nietszche Award, the Nobel
in philosophy.
Since Plato and the ancient greeks there has been a " marriage"between" eros and poiesis, between life and
creativity,and the artist and his subjectivity and the common
laws and culture of the "polis" . There was also a changing
alliance between these terms trought the Rennaisance
thinker Pico della Mirandola, Goethe, Hegel and Nietzshe,
but there are a very divorce, as has seen for example novelist Thomas Mann, in modern art. because and excese of criticism. A divorce that we have to put end, or art will .never have again its own and lost fertility.

This huge volume is an excellent resource for teachers and students of Asian history. It contains dozens of essays on Asia and the west, Asia and the world, and themes in Asian history, written by some of our finest historians. The information on Asian history, culture, and religions is fascinating and accessible. For high school AP World History teachers like me, it is an invaluable reference because it provides both great scholarship and intriguing little "hooks" we can use to keep the students interested. I keep this book in my classroom at all times.

John Carlos Rowe takes a fascinating look at some of America's greatest literary minds and discusses their positions concerning the two major politcal movements of the 19th century: abolition and women's rights. Using Emerson as a starting point(hence the title), he details the writers' political comittment and efficacy.Authors discussed include Melville, Poe, Douglass, Whitman and Twain. This is a fascinating look at the writers, their times, and their politics.

The failed American military involvement in Laos presents a tough target for any researcher, but Dr. Castle successfully negotiates the obstacle course to gain access to and declassify critical documents which form the foundation for this valuable look back on an episode in danger of being forgotten. Well-documented interviews with key players of the time fill in many but not all of the gaps. Those readers more interested in the personal impact on the families of those lost in action during this failed campaign will find Castle's follow-on book "One Day Too Long" a more direct fit to their needs.

I do not wish to write a review. I merely wish to point out to you that the book is distributed by Columbia University Press, and is available from the Press for 44 dollars. Your price is an unheard of 260 dollars! Somebody must have goofed in your organization when he or she set your price, which should be less than Columbia's!