Washington University Books

What a great resource and reference for theater in this time. Subtitle is: From the Beginning to 1914. Lots of photos, detailed complete appendixes for plays, entertainments. Chapters include Multum in Parvo, the Box-Houses, Morals and Manners, the Circuits, and There Isn't Any More. Names of the troupes and companies are precious. Great deal, recommended, and very rare.

Silbergeld takes the three Chinese films Suzhou River, The Day the Sun Turned Cold, and Good Men to examine how Western film techniques have been brought into Chinese cinema. The films also evidence that Western literary and cultural influences are a part of Chinese cinema. The influence of Freud, Faulkner, and Dostoevsky can be seen in one or more of the films; and, not surprisingly, the cinematic techniques of Hitchcock are seen, as well those of David Lynch and Jean Luc-Godard. "The [Chinese] films are remarkable for their intellectual depth and range, their layered complexity, their emotional sobriety, their appeal to a sophisticated film audience rather than a mass market, their determined critique of contemporary culture...and the resonance of their moral voice." The same could be said for Western art films, which the Chinese films plainly resemble, to the point of imitation in many ways. In a pocket inside the back cover is a CD with scenes from the movies. Silbergeld's selection of only three distinctive, yet in many ways representative films makes for an efficient, yet pithy exposure to the best of Chinese art films; which films are gaining more attention as China's economic and political power grows.

This is an excellent book on Wet-Site Archaeology, a good reference/text book, but with all the illustrations provides entertaining reading as well.

Although Dr. Susan Swetnnam is an award winning professor, public servant, researcher, humanitarian, athlete, baker and knitter, along with being a well published author, it is clear, after reading Home Mountains, she is most importantly a real woman. The collection of charming personal essays, recounts life experiences which can be read for simple entertainment, as a good read, or can be interpreted for a deeper, more individual meaning. It's easy to visulalize the characters in Swetnam's stories, fron the "heavy-set, tightly-permanented woman" taking entries at the County Fair, to the Beauty horse with "her short cocoa legs and stocky golden brown body extended in an exaggerated waking cat pull, black mane tossed out of her eyes." Her appreciation of her home mountains, located in the Caribou National Forest, will entice the reader to look again at their own home "mountains" and find deeper awareness of their physical surroundings. The lessons learned from Swetnam's life parallel meanings readers can identify with. Such as facing the fears that came from her childhood, including the fear of fire, and worse, the fear of living the mundane life of her parents. Along with using the fear of losing the love of her life, in order to keep her eyes open and alert to the life she has with him. In addition, the reader will rejoice with Swetnam as she transforms her humble, vulnerable, and often humorous experiences into insightful examples, learning, among other things, the importance of ordinary time and casual relationships, and letting go, and the pleasures of being alone and how it feels to be loved. The essays can be read individually in small doses to be thought about, or straight through with out being overwhelming. The articles stand alone, but blend together nicely. Take an afternoon and get lost in Swetnam's life, laugh at her characters, envision her mountains, and try not to fall in love with her husband.

Adams worked as an insider at the highest levels of academic administration for much longer than anyone should ever have to. This book clearly takes up much of the hatred of the culture wars. You can see this topic played out in The Education of Max Bickford, or in novels like Straight Man, but the topic is so much more painfully dissected in this novel, as the people involved in the internecine war are much more human than they are ideological machines, and it's the humanity that suffers in the present conversation between traditional academic scholars and cultural studies mavens.

It's hard to put your finger on why this book is great. I've always been interested in anarchist communes of the Pacific Northwest. There's research and a resurrection of one of these. Another strong interest is how sexual harassment is being used as a weapon to gain academic power by a very small minority, and how this weapon is destroying any sense of collegiality in humanities departments. what Adams reaches for is the humanity behind people in those humanities departments. It is this that nobody really dares to show, but which is nevertheless always there.

This novel won't be for everyone. Anyone, however, who has suffered through the culture wars while attending graduate school in English at the University of Washington, however, will find this book right on the money. I'm not sure if other graduate programs are as terribly afflicted as that one, but that school was a disaster in which all sense of conversation had broken down, and only single-issue name-calling, and lies, and the bearing of false witness remained, except for a few small circles when they were in very protected environments.

This novel astutely and rather wisely recounts that one battleground in the cultural wars. I feel almost grateful to have gone through that war just in order to have this book's psychogeography down pat. Novels like this take something horrible and make it comprehensible, and manage to create a sense of community out of the incommunicable.

I'm grateful. I suspect that those who aren't very in on the lingo and debates of the last few years in literary studies will have a tough go with this one and be unable to quite get their bearings. For me, I couldn't put it down. It was a powerful and tremendous book that moved me as deeply as literature ever has, and is likely to remain one of my favorite books. there were some characters I couldn't get a feel for, and some of the plot concerning the fin de siecle anarchists seemed slow, as I couldn't wait to get back to the sexual harassment case in present time, but finally the author managed to pull it all together into a very impressive ending. This book is a song of experience: a lifetime spent in academia distilled, and one feels the author's simultaneous gratitude, amusement, and sorrow all mixed together and in no particular order.

Nadasdy spent several years in the Yukon living with Kluane People. He lived in a cabin in town and he lived out of the land with them. He attended land claims meetings and other meetings on co-management issues, for example related to issues of conserving numbers of Dall sheep in the area. He describes how Canadian First Nations people are required to bureaucratize themselves in order to even start to engage with the Canadian state in various key fights. Thus, the title refers to two conflicting roles held by Indians/First Nations people, sometimes the same person.

The book is very tightly argued, and sometimes the theoretical points Nadasdy is making can be challenging for beginning students or non-anthropologists. However, he does write in a clear, accessible manner. Reading this book may get you interested in reading other anthropology gems, too. I heartily recommend this book to anyone interested in hunters, northern First Nations/Aboriginal peoples, indigenous rights movements, theories of the state, and theories of knowlege and 'traditional ecological knowledge'.

For me this book was truly a Godsend. Because I was never aware of the complete history of my family's experience during the holocaust, I always hungered to know the truth.
When I recieved the book, "I'm no Hero" written by my Uncle, it filled in a part of my heritage that I truly needed to understand. I could not put the book down and to think that my Uncle has now dedicated the last years of his life re living this horrific part of his past to educate students all over the country I can only say,while his book is entitled "I'm no Hero" in my book he is.

Henry Friedman's life story is played out against the horrors of the holocaust and how one teenager survived with some family members, and ultimately triumphed in America. His life as a hidden teenager is a riveting account of sheer dogged determination to survive under horrendous conditions. The reader is enthralled as he survives one episode to the next. Considering how honest the author is about his growing sexuality, this book should be made into a Hollywood movie. But it is ultimately a tale of the triumph of the human spirit to survive! A must read in any collection on holocaust survivors.

Other books of a similar theme include Harold Werner's "Fighting Back"(although Werner was older and was a partisan, which Henry wasn't), Larry Orbach's "Soaring Underground"(although Orbach lived in Nazi Germany), and Thomas Blatt's "From the Ashes of Sobibor" (although Blatt's adventure included stays in the concentration camp prior to his escape/hiding)

This book provides a wonderful overview of petroglyphs and pictographs in general, with the emphasis on the Northwestern states (Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Western Montana) and British Columbia. There are images on nearly every page including black and white photos and drawing recreations. Many elements of rock art are described and defined. There is a time line illustrating eras from pit and groove to modern, and a brief description of what Native American Indians were doing during that time. There are also some quantitative charts of elements. This is a great book for anyone interested in Native Americans, Archaeology, Rock Art, or a great way to get interested.

J.J. Creighton has written a fascinating book on a largely unknown encounter between a group of art students and instructors and a group of traditional Native Americans. This happened in a rather remote area of the state (the Colville Reservation) in the 1930s when gravel roads were the norm. A wonderful record of life on the reservation has been preserved in the form of portraits and landscapes, many of which are illustrated in this book.