Columbia Books

A wonderful book on the relation between film and the Arte deco style, especially in regards to the female icons in cinema representing this unique form of expression. The chapter on the Divine Garbo was particularly fascinating, in describing Garbo the actress as an Art deco icon in relation to the envrironnement of her films, not only the decors which represent the Art deco trend of her films but also the philosophy and ideas of this trend which she seems to represent. The book gave us a burning desire to watch again and again all those wonderful movies (with Garbo Woman of Affairs, The kiss, The Torrent, The single Standard, with Rogers and Astaire and many others) and to realise the richness of the Art deco style and the power of the cinema as a medium of communication.

Desolation Sound: A History is an anecdote-filled chronicle of the rich past of Desolation Sound, one hundred miles north of Vancouver, British Columbia. Today, Desolation Sound is almost as depopulated today as it was in 1792 when the dyspeptic Captain George Vancouver named it. From reclusive hermits, to a Depression-era logging camp that valued life so poorly that accident victims were piled in a heap and not moved until the following day, Sliammon chief Joe Mitchell, and much more. Debunking false legends and confirming true stories, Desolation Sound is a most enjoyable read accessible to history lovers of all backgrounds, and is highly recommended for Canadian History shelves.

Dialogue With Nietzsche is an anthology of essays by Gianni Vattimo, one of Europe's foremost philosophers, whose postwar thought has helped bring analysis of Nietzsche into the focus of postwar scrutiny. Essays presented include "Nihilism and the Problem of Temporality", "Philosophy as Ontological Activity", "Nietzsche and Contemporary Hermeneutics", "The Wisdom of the Superman", "The Gay Science", and many more. Themes explored in depth range from a comparison Heidegger's philosophy with Nietzsche's to the viability of Nietzsche's views of truth, ethics, aesthetics, and more. Vattimo often quotes fragments from Nietzsche's notebooks, many of which have never been previously translated into English. An extensive section of notes and an index make this scholarly and rigorous collection more accessible to lay readers as well as intermediate to advanced philosophy students. Especially recommended for philosophy libraries and scholars of Nietzsche's writings.

Here, Deleuze and Parnet give very illuminating and interesting form to many of the ideas that will later be expressed w/Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus. Excellently translated and insightful-- as though one were listening to Deleuze with an acquaintance speaking of the direction of his theory in the 80's. Highly recommended.

Dialogues in Arab Politics has a lot on the importance of norms and social structure in international relations. Michael N. Barnett analyzes the norms and social structure at a regional context. Like Stephen M. Walt's The Origins of Alliances Barnett takes his case from the Middle East. He examines three quarter centuries of the Arab politics from the constructivist perspective; hence he re-conceptualizes the history of Arab politics. In so doing, he insists on norms and symbols of Arab politics, normative fragmentation among Arabs, symbolic exchanges and social processes. He puts norms and identities as the critical variables in shaping state interests by examining the Arab politics in that process. He defines dialogues as the times the Arab states begin to discuss about the desired regional order. The discussion is circumscribed by norms of Arabism and sovereignty. Barnett defines Arabism as source of both Arab identity and interests. He also deems norm of Arabism as expression of their interests. Norms of Arabism have been also used as an instrument by one state in order to manipulate and/control the foreign policies of other Arab states. In this respect, norms can be both constraining as well as instrumental factors. Norms and identities have also greatly influenced the Arabs in their unification goal as well as their relations with the West and Israel. Pan-Arabism was relevant from the Baghdad Pact to the 1967 War and it declined its force after the 1967 war and it disappeared from the agenda by the end of the Gulf War. Then the norm of Arabism was replaced by norm of sovereignty in Arab politics. The normative shift eventually changed the foreign policies of the Arab states that they begun to focus on state interests not on Arab interests. Overall, Dialogues in Arab Politics makes a great contribution to the growing constructivist literature in recent years.

Robert Boyers' second collection of essays on politics in the novel, The Dictator's Dictation, is even more pleasurable to read than his first on the subject, Atrocity and Amnesia, published almost twenty years ago. Written in the lucid style that calls to mind the criticism of the late Irving Howe, these essays are, for the most part, homages to figures he has obviously admired for many years. Boyers is famous in literary circles for his passionate support and eloquent praise of contemporary writers (so much so that Ausable Press published one hundred of his literary introductions a few years ago under the title A Book of Common Praise), and it is the instinct to pay tribute to writers while looking closely at their ambitions and occasional mis-steps which pervades The Dictator's Dictation. Boyers is obviously interested in politics and ideas, but he is even more interested in the way that the political imagination shapes books by writers as different from one another as WG Sebald and John Updike, Phillip Roth and Anita Desai, JM Coetzee and Natalia Ginzburg. Boyers argues that there is no such thing as a political novel, but he is clearly drawn in a very powerful way to writers who can't manage to keep politics out of their books, as hard as they sometimes try not to use their novels to score political points. The reader of this new book will marvel at how well Boyers deals with so many different kinds of writers and manages to identify what makes them tick.The Dictator's Dictation is extraordinary not only for the steady intelligence it shines on its subject but for the generosity of spirit which informs the entire analytic enterprise.

Those familiar with Dr. Gilmore's seminal text on American Romanticism may perhaps be initially startled at the theoretical daring of *Differences in the Dark*; thoughtful readers will, however, find in this chiaroscuristic artefact a blueprint for their post-Y2K lives. If, as Toni Morrison suggests, we are all merely "playing in the dark," then genre-based critiques of filmic performance are destined to subtend the vernacular. I think Gilmore's book is a good summer read, being very readable. People who have found themselves to enjoy works such as *Fried Green Tomatoes* and *A Circle of Friends* will lap up Gilmore's book like a warm saucer of milk.

"Dinosaur Tracks and Other Footprints of the Western United States" written by Martin Lockley and Adrian P. Hunt is a gem of a text book covering dinosaur tracks left by dinosaurs millions of years ago. It not only tells you how to observe and record the trackways, but gives you the areas in which trackways have been found throughout the Western United States.

"Dinosaur Tracks" names the trackways, gives an explaination as to how the tracks are preserved and where are the tracks...incorporating interpretation of fossil footprints along with track assemblages is found with the pages of this book. We see tracks throughout time and the book touches on conservation and preservation of trackways.

There are 7 major chapters in the book and they are as follows:

An Introduction to Fossil Footprints
Ancient Tracks: The Paleoxoic Era
Archosaur Ascendancy: The Triassic
Days of Dinosaur Dominance I: The Jurassic
Days of Dinosaur Dominance II: The Cretaceous
The Age of Birds and Mammals: The Cenozoic Era
Tracks Galore, and What They Can Tell Us.

The footprint sites and exhibits in the Western United States covers the following states. Arizona with Lake Powell, Museum of Nothern Arizona, and Tuba City. California with Raymond Alf Museum and The University of California at Berkley. Colorado with Dinosaur Ridge, Dinosaur Valley, Purgatorie Valley, Rancho Rio, and University of Colorado at Denver. Nebraska with Toadstool Park, Ogallalla National Grassland. New Mexico with Clayton Lake State Park and the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. South Dakota at Hot Springs Mammoth Site. Texas with Dinosaur Valley State Park. Utah with The Molab Vicinity, Prehistoric Museum, College of Eastern Utah, The Vernal Vicinity, and The Warner Valley. These sites are covered well within the pages of this book.

There are diagrams and pictures of the actual footprint trackways and the explaination as to what type of dinosaurs or animal make the tracks. There is adequate discussion as to why they are what they are.

I found the book to be written like a text book, but with a style that keeps you interested about the subject at hand. The is excellent discussion and the book is well reasoned out. "Dinosaur Tracks" is a book for the serious dinosaur enthusist... this is a college text and reads like one, for an audience that is either taking geology or paleontology. I gave "Dinosaur Tracks" a solid 5 star rating for an excellent presentation of the subject and an interesting book about dinosaur footprints and their interpretation.

A look at the French sociologist and philosopher Maurice Foucault's conceptions of power from the perspective of gender and sexuality within schools. Sue Middleton argues that the problem is both historical in nature and persistent in being, and that even today much of the control of young human beings is physically manifested in their bodies, especially their sexual bodies, despite the much publicised outlawing of methods of discipline like caning. I read this book as a sociological aide, but would equally recommend it to those training to teach. Most important it is written very clearly and is excellent at the demystification of Foucauldian language in particular.

The following review is based on the 1984 edition.

In "Discovering History in China" Cohen argues that much of the scholarship in the West that had occurred on China prior to the mid-1970's, (particularly American scholarship), had been conducted with an "ethnocentric distortion". Because the West had an impact in shaping modern China, pre-World War II (W.W. II) studies on China tended to focus on matters Western countries had a direct role in, such as the Opium Wars, missionary work, the Taiping uprising, sino-foreign trade, etc.. These studies tended to be from missionaries, diplomats, and others who had no formal training as historians.

In post-W.W. II studies of China (while the subject matter had widened) emphasis "was still to an overwhelming extent on the shaping role of the Western intrusion"(p.2). Much of what was written after W.W. II, according to Cohen, viewed the Western role in shaping modern China in a positive light. It was not until the liberalism of the late 1960's that historians began to question this purely positive look at imperialism and looked instead at ways the Western involvement in China had affected the "natural forward movement of Chinese history". However, many scholars still saw the West as the main antagonist in preventing China's 'modern development'.

Chapter one deals with the amount of influence Western nations had on events shaping China in the late 1800's. Cohen believes that the amount of influence the Western imperialist countries had on events inside China during the late 1800's was negligible overall. It was only after the Tongzhi Restoration that the Western presence in China played any significant role in shaping Chinese affairs. Even the reform efforts of 1898 - how much can be contributed to a reaction to the 'Western threat' and how much can be contributed to reactions to domestic conditions.

In the second chapter, "Moving Beyond Tradition and Modernity", Cohen takes aim at the notion of an unchanging China. Much of this section is a variant of the first chapter, where Cohen discusses the views of scholars from the 1950's and 1960's such as Joseph Levenson and John K. Fairbank. During this time the dominant view was that the concept of change or modernization in China was a product of direct contact with the West. In other words, China could not have "modernized" on its own without some kind of impetus from outside.

This concept of an unchanging China in American scholarship began to be questioned and negated with the introduction of Philip Kuhn's study "Rebellion and its Enemies in Late Imperial China"(1970). In this study, Kuhn attempts to redefine the question of Chinese modernity, moving away from a belief that change only occurred with help from the Western presence in the mid- to late 1800's to one that scrutinized domestic changes taking place in China long before the Western presence.

Much of chapter three "Imperialism: Reality or Myth?" analyzes the diatribe of James Peck, who in an article published in the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (Oct. 1969, 2(1)p.59-69), argued modernization theory was a construct that explained away America's imperialistic nature. Written while Peck was a graduate student during the Vietnam War in the late 1960's, the article takes the view of the Chinese Communists, that is, everything which went wrong in China from the Opium War to the 'liberation' of 1949 was caused in large part by Western imperialism.

While reading Cohen's analysis of Peck's argument I could not help but think why was he [Cohen] giving so much attention to someone who, as A. Feuerwerker has pointed out in his own review of Cohen's book, "knew little about China" (see the Journal of Asian Studies, vol.44, no.3, May 1985; pp.579-80).

However, later in the chapter Cohen, through his use of other's scholarship, shows that all of China was not affected the same way by imperialism. The effects felt in the treaty ports and the littorial regions, where much of the Western influence was felt, was not congruent with the effects felt in the hinterland, where daily life went on much as it always had.

This leads us to the final chapter, "A China-Centered History of China". In this chapter, Cohen reviews the trends that had taken place throughout the 1970's and at the time of Cohen's writing, the nascent years of the 1980's. The evolution of American scholarship during this time was increasingly focusing on what Cohen terms, "Chinese problems set in a Chinese context" (p.154) or put another way, studying Chinese history from a Chinese perspective. This involved breaking China down into more manageable "spatial units" - (regional or provincial centered studies) while detracting from a top down approach of Chinese society and concentrating more on lower levels of Chinese society.