Arcadia University Books

This is a book with lots of pictures. Every single page has atleast one picture on it, then a small blurb of the picture. This is the content of the entire book. It mostly skims through the history of the school in just 127 pages. Small book to cover 100 years of history. I graduated from GCU and do appreciate it. If you are looking for in-depth information this is not the book to get.

Having read about this new book first in the Princeton Packet and later on the Princeton website, and having admired the handsome cover and elegant description here on Amazon.com, I had high hopes for this one. Unfortunately, after the hour or two I spent reading this (no more), I was left mostly disappointed. The book's "rich text" consists of no more than ten pages of prose, with the rest coming in the form of captions to black and white photos. The making of A Beautiful Mind is indeed "chronicled," but only in one, not-particularly-interesting still from the set. Although several photos are of interest, particularly of long-gone campus buildings, they are presented in the dullest possible way, almost always two to a page. That said, the captions to them are factually accurate, and often pithy or even witty. The author knows his stuff. I can't help feeling, however, that a better book might have been made with choicer photos in a more dynamic layout. Perhaps the author felt constrained not to tread on ground already trod by Don Oberdorfer's superior Princeton: The First 250 Years. For all but the completist, I'd recommend that, J.I. Merritt's Best of PAW, or Raymond Rhinehart's Campus Guide before this one.

I'm delighted to finally have all the information on the architecture of my alma mater, and the chronology of all the names for UArts over the years is useful, but the most exciting bits of the university start in the 80s, which are not eligible for this publishing house to include. If you're satisfied with two photos from 1965, buy it. If you'd like to browse great photos from prior to 1956, borrow it from an alum. And where did the basement bank vault from Anderson Hall come from if the building was a parking garage?! Thank you, though, Sara for compiling the information, and for including the refrain from the PMSIA school song ... we sang it at Orientation 1990!

For anyone who is interested in the history of California and art, this is a very interesting book.

Someday, when the historians and sociologists of the future try to dissect the late 20th Century, they will make snide comments and rude remarks about the rampant "political correctness" and revisionist history that infected so much of the 1990s -- and they will use the text of this book as "Exhibit A." It entirely misses the essence of what actually happened here during three hundred fascinating years.

"Pacific Arcadia : Images of California, 1600-1915" ought to be a wonderful book; the history of California is full of fizz and sizzle, a place where spectacular things happened and superb artists were present to record them. The images in this book are indeed wonderful -- but they are accompanied with a commentary that commits a historian's cardinal sin, applying the manners and morals of the present to a time and place in the past. The author simply can't accept that the artists who recorded their views of California back in the 18th and 19th centuries actually liked the things she abhors today. Here's just one small example:

" . . . The repeated instances of animals under restraint - tethered horses in the field, rearing horses dominated by Spanish riders, cattle corralled by the presidio walls - serve as metaphors for the involuntary servitude of the native laborers and refer to the often unwilling role of Indians in the 'encomienda' system. Furthermore, the pointed wedge [in one painting] of the garrison walls that cuts so imposingly into the fields where the Indians work also hints at the frequently hostile relationship between the settlers and indigenous tribes. ..."

Well, if you like that kind of stuff, there's plenty more of the same. It is really rather tragic, too, because the book includes some really delicious painting, drawing, photography, and engravings that deserve better. The illustrations are generally subordinate to the text; reproductions are often a bit too small to see clearly, and captions provide only minimal information. The author of this book has obviously spent a great deal of time studying the people of California's past; it is unfortunate that she didn't seem to learn much about them.

Lack of knowledge of sports history of KSU makes this attempt an incomplete grade. Too many key figures were left out. How about if they just ranked the top KSU figures ever they would have noticed their omissions. How about just asking Lou Holtz or Bill Bertka!