Columbia Books

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.

If you need a quick and dirty, but highly authoritative low-down on Shakespeare, this book by a traditionally revered Shake academic literary critic is for you.
John Russell Brown is Prof Emeritus on Theatre/Drama and English Language/Literature. Everyone who studies Shakespeare has read some reference to him or one of his articles.
He's old-school so you won't be deluged w/ deconstructionalist or other literary criticism arguments and terms. So, in this sense ANYBODY will understand this book, even if they aren't a navel-gazing graduate student.
Like any good Prof of Drama he throws in several chapters about acting and interpreting the play from an actor's point of view.

To say that a book of criticism is "readable" these days is no small matter. Much contemporary criticism, especially if it contains a political component, is so highly obfuscated that even other academics disdain to read it, except perhaps as a soporific for insomniacs. If you don't believe that, ask any university press how their sales are these days.

Blessedly, "Dismantling Glory" is an excellent book-length essay on war poetry that treats the poetry as well as the subject. As with the graceful writing of Walter Benjamin, it is every bit as intellectually vigorous as high theory without the pretentious language. War poetry has always held a strange place in the various canons, in spite of the fact that much of great literature concerns war; from Homer to the present. Goldensohn's excellent book integrates war poetry into a large literary overview, with erudition and respect. A great read.

In 1973, I made a trip to Washington, D.C. This book was great research material. Not only did it tell me about places to visit, but the maps and pictures of the buildings made me very familiar with the city, and what was where. I was able to name the buildings when I was in the city. People stopped and asked me for directions. Now, I have a friend who is going to D.C., and I am buying this book for her, and I hope it is as valuable to to prepare herfor her trip as it was to me.

This was required reading for a graduate course in medieval history.
"The Divine Comedy" describes Dante's journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso), guided first by the Roman epic poet Virgil and then by Beatrice, the subject of his love and another of his works, "La Vita Nuova." While the vision of Hell, the Inferno, is vivid for modern readers, the theological niceties presented in the other books require a certain amount of patience and scholarship to understand. Purgatorio, the most lyrical and human of the three, also has the most poets in it; Paradiso, the most heavily theological, has the most beautiful and ecstatic mystic passages in which Dante tries to describe what he confesses he is unable to convey (e.g., when Dante looks into the face of God: "all'alta fantasia qui mancò possa" - "at this high moment, ability failed my capacity to describe," Paradiso, XXXIII, 142).

Dante wrote the Comedy in his regional dialect. By creating a poem of epic structure and philosophic purpose, he established that the Italian language was suitable for the highest sort of expression, and simultaneously established the Tuscan dialect as the standard for Italian. In French, Italian is nicknamed la langue de Dante. Publishing in the vernacular language marked Dante as one of the first (among others such as Geoffrey Chaucer and Giovanni Boccaccio) to break from standards of publishing in only Latin or Greek (the languages of Church and antiquity). This break allowed more literature to be published for a wider audience - setting the stage for greater levels of literacy in the future.

Readers often cannot understand how such a serious work may be called a "comedy". In Dante's time, all serious scholarly works were written in Latin (a tradition that would persist for several hundred years more, until the waning years of the Enlightenment) and works written in any other language were assumed to be comedic in nature. Furthermore, the word "comedy," in the classical sense, refers to works which reflect belief in an ordered universe, in which events not only tended towards a happy or "amusing" ending, but an ending influenced by a Providential will that orders all things to an ultimate good. By this meaning of the word, the progression of Dante's pilgrim from Hell to Paradise is the paradigmatic expression of comedy, since the work begins with the pilgrim's moral confusion and ends with the vision of God.

The Divine Comedy can be described simply as an allegory: Each canto, and the episodes therein, can contain many alternate meanings. Dante's allegory, however, is more complex, and, in explaining how to read the poem (see the "Letter to Can Grande della Scala"), he outlines other levels of meaning besides the allegory (the historical, the moral, the literal, and the anagogical). The structure of the poem, likewise, is quite complex, with mathematical and numerological patterns arching throughout the work, particularly threes and nines. The poem is often lauded for its particularly human qualities: Dante's skillful delineation of the characters he encounters in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise; his bitter denunciations of Florentine and Italian politics; and his powerful poetic imagination. Dante's use of real characters, according to Dorothy Sayers in her introduction to her translation of "L'Inferno", allows Dante the freedom of not having to involve the reader in description, and allows him to "[make] room in his poem for the discussion of a great many subjects of the utmost importance, thus widening its range and increasing its variety."

Dante called the poem "Comedy" (the adjective "Divine" added later in the 16th century) because poems in the ancient world were classified as High ("Tragedy") or Low ("Comedy"). Low poems had happy endings and were of everyday or vulgar subjects, while High poems were for more serious matters. Dante was one of the first in the Middle Ages to write of a serious subject, the Redemption of man, in the low and vulgar Italian language and not the Latin language as one might expect for such a serious topic.

Purgatorio
Having survived the depths of Hell, Dante and Virgil ascend out of the undergloom, to the Mountain of Purgatory on the far side of the world (in Dante's time, it was believed that Hell existed underneath Jerusalem). The Mountain is on an island, the only land in the Southern Hemisphere. At the shores of Purgatory, Dante and Virgil are attracted by a musical performance by Casella, but are reprimanded by Cato, a pagan who has been placed by God as the general guardian of the approach to the mountain. The text gives no indication whether or not Cato's soul is destined for heaven: his symbolic significance has been much debated. (Cantos I and II).

Dante starts the ascent on Mount Purgatory. On the lower slopes (designated as "ante-Purgatory" by commentators) Dante meets first a group of excommunicates, detained for a period thirty times as long as their period of contumacy. Ascending higher, he encounters those too lazy to repent until shortly before death, and those who suffered violent deaths (often due to leading extremely sinful lives). These souls will be admitted to Purgatory thanks to their genuine repentance, but must wait outside for an amount of time equal to their lives on earth (Cantos III through VI). Finally, Dante is shown a beautiful valley where he sees the lately-deceased monarchs of the great nations of Europe, and a number of other persons whose devotion to public and private duties hampered their faith (Cantos VII and VIII). From this valley Dante is carried (while asleep) up to the gates of Purgatory proper (Canto IX).

The gate of Purgatory is guarded by an angel who uses the point of his sword to draw the letter "P" (signifying peccatum, sin) seven times on Dante's forehead, abjuring him to "wash you those wounds within". The angel uses two keys, gold and silver, to open the gate and warns Dante not to look back, lest he should find himself outside the gate again, symbolizing Dante having to overcome and rise above the hell that he has just left and thusly leaving his sinning ways behind him. From there, Virgil guides the pilgrim Dante through the seven terraces of Purgatory. These correspond to the seven deadly sins, each terrace purging a particular sin in an appropriate manner. Those in purgatory can leave their circle whenever they like, but essentially there is an honors system where no one leaves until they have corrected the nature within themselves that caused them to commit that sin. Souls can only move upwards and never backwards, since the intent of Purgatory is for souls to ascend towards God in Heaven, and can ascend only during daylight hours, since the light of God is the only true guidance.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in literature and medieval history.

This book of scholarly essays on the impact of Mozart's "Don Giovanni" provides a very interesting set of perspectives on how this magnificent work influenced the cultural world of the West, especially in the 19th century. Not easy reading but fascinating to me as someone who has lived his life in the thrall of this opera.

Eliseo Alberto es definitivamente el mejor escritor Cubano de su generacion. He leido toda su obra, no me pierdo un libro de este escritor. Todos sus libros son buenos(incluyendo este, por supuesto) Es de esos escritores que me gustaria conocer.
Que talento!! Recomiendo este libro y todos los que ha escrito este cubano.