Columbia Books

This book is a series of essays on the history of 'The Long War.' This war began in about 1941 and has continued with more or less shooting ever since. It has been marked, as have all wars, with instances of incompetence, poor judgment, a callow unwillingness to face the facts, ignorance, prejudice, and irrational hysteria.

Each essay is independent and covers the personal interests/expertise of the writer. Through them all, however, a common theme emerges that the war making institutions, be they in the defense community, defense industries, or intelligence agencies have not performed to the standard that one would hope.

This book is a history. The authors are primarily history professors at U.S. universities. Unfortunately being historians, the authors do not make many projections of the future. Perhaps though, this is impossible, and 'The Long War' will continue forever. It certainly seems that it's current incarnation of 'The War on Terror' seems to have no foreseeable end. Yesterday even the Democratic candidates were talking of bombing Pakistan and even threatening to use nuclear weapons.

Healey's challenge is to create understandings of the social construction of meaning and the social embeddedness of ways of acting and thinking to be tied with understandings of the wider forces affecting urban regions and governance.

Collaborative Planning, while still purporting to address the failings of Modern planning, seeks to address the difficulties of undertaking collective action in a world where fact and value cannot be separated, by using an institutional approach which pays heed to the cultural embeddedness of individuals, and the social construction of meaning. Through policy discourse, the institutional capacity of a place can be 'built up'. Planning then, has the potential to shape the building of relations and discourse. An institutional approach would not measure success via assessment of outcomes against goals, but would also look at the institutional capacity generated by the process. All stakeholders are part of the dialogue.

Collaborative Planning sees 'the problem' as essentially being: the changing dynamics of the way we live, global economics, bringing the views of all stakeholders together in a way that recognises power structures, and the role that planning might play in resolving these.

Overall, the book is an excellent starting point for the critical exploration of communicative planning and the governance of urban regions. The book successfully synthesizes practical understandings of urban dynamics with a critique informed by a sound philosophical and political basis. I strongly recommend it, especially to the student and practitioner of urban planning and related fields.

I am very satisfied about this book. I recieved at good timing from when I ordered it. Also this person kept me posted on when they had sent it and where it was. Thank you very much!!

An essential referance for any Civil War Library. The amount of facts and photos will not be found in any other work. Hopefully Mr. Hunt will come out with the other volumes in the series on a regular and shorter time frame. Kudos and thankyou Mr. Hunt.

Lots of pictures and examples, also explains the difference between matting fine art and decorative art, relationship between the framing and the setting (room) where it is hung, things which are barely covered in other framing books. There is no instruction on how to cut the mats or assemble the frames; the focus is all on design. She explains her decisions, so even if you don't agree with her choices, at least you understand why. This has been helpful to me as an artist matting my own works on paper. Now, if I want to, I can choose mat colors as part of a total presentation instead of defaulting to "museum white."

This was a great book telling how the laws prejudeces i reccomend it to anybody interested in the truth.

Author: Holbrook, Stewart Hall, 1893-1964.
Title: The Columbia. Illustrated by Ernest Richardson.
Publisher: New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston [1974, c1956]
Edition Date: 1974
Language: English
Notes: Reprint of the ed. published by Rinehart, New York; with new introd.
Physical Details: xxiv, 393 p. illus. 21 cm.
Series: Rivers of America
Subjects: Columbia River.
Northwest, Pacific--History.

This book is not only about human rights abuses. It also documents the absence of justice in Colombia. The state must take responsibility for much of the violence in Colombia. The armed forces must be sanitized of criminal elements. Until this is accomplished the nation will continue to live with revolution. The bloody assault of all political parties in Colombia, particularly the Patriotic Union is a disgrace and a blemish on leaders in Bogota.

I read a number of papers and books while studying for my qualifying exam and this was my favourite by a long shot. Simpson writes in an informative yet entertaining manner and many of his ideas (such as those about adaptive zones) are still informative today. A great synthesis of a broad subject by a writer well versed in ecology, evolution, and palaeontology. If you want a good feeling for "state of the art" then and now, read this book, then read Schluter's The Ecology of Adaptive Radiation.

THE COLUMBIA BOOK OF CHINESE POETRY : From Early Times to the Thirteenth Century. Translated and Edited by BURTON WATSON. 385 pp. (Translations from the Oriental Classics). New York : Columbia University Press, 1984. ISBN 0-231-05682-6 (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 wants to returns to.

The present anthology has always been one of my favorite books. In contrast to the more recent mammoth anthologies of Victor Mair (1335 pages) and John Minford (1176 pages), Watson's, at a mere 385 pages, is a far more modest and manageable proposition.

Unlike the Mair and Minford, it can be held easily in the hand while reading, and it is printed in a large clear font on spacious pages in which the lines have room to breathe. Modest in size it is also modest in presentation. Selections are preceded by only the briefest of introductions, and footnotes have been kept to an absolute minimum.

In his brief but extremely well-written and informative Introduction, Watson tells us that : "The present anthology is intended to give a representative selection of Chinese poetry in the 'shih' form from the first two thousand years of China's long literary history ... as well as outstanding works in the 'fu' and 'tz'u' forms and a few other works such as the 'Li Sao' or 'Encountering Sorrow' that are unique in form" (p.13).

His book includes selections from 'The Book of Odes,' 'The Ch'u Tzu,' Early Songs, Poems in Rhyme-Prose Form, Poems of the Han and Wei, T'ao Yuan-ming, Wang Wei, Li Po, Tu Fu, Han Yu, Po Chu-i, Han Shan, Su T'ung-po, Lu Yu, and much else besides.

Here, as an example of his superb style, is his translation of Liu Tsung-yuan's 'River Snow' (with my obliques added to indicate line breaks) :

"From a thousand hills, bird flights have vanished; / on ten thousand paths, human traces wiped out : / lone boat, an old man in straw cape and hat, / fishing alone in the cold river snow" (p.282).

The truth of Burton Watson's statement that the "Chinese poetic world is one that is remarkably easy to enter.... Even works that are many centuries removed from us in time come across with a freshness and immediacy that is often quite miraculous" (p.3) is very much in evidence here.

Anyone who would like to get a good idea of what Chinese poetry is all about, and to actually enjoy the experience of finding out, should certainly consider the present anthology. Anthologies such as those of Mair and Minford are all very well in their way and can serve as useful references, but they are hardly books that one can sit down and read with pleasure from beginning to end.

Watson's, however, is just such a book, and I have no hesitation in recommending it to anyone who would like to begin exploring some of the richest and most interesting poetry in the world.