Urban Primitive Books

Things I love about this book:

The author makes camping seem fun and easy - which it is!

You don't feel like a loser for not spending a bazillion dollars on camping equipment. It's okay to go camping "ghetto-style" - or in my case "non-profit style"!

The author has some really fun ideas in here - like awarding badges after a camping trip.

If you take everything in this book to heart, you will be equipped for your very first (or maybe your very first SUCCESSFUL) camping trip.

You don't have to be a newbie camper or a city girl to find something useful about this book. I'm an experienced camper who hates city-life, but this is one of my favorite gifts from last year.

If this book does nothing else for you, it will make you laugh!

Very inspiring, and always funny. I can't believe the recipes that are commonplace in this book--very helpful guide for a somewhat more experienced chick-camper!

I got this as a gift for a family member that we want to go camping with us. It's a great beginners guide for all things camping related.

I enjoyed this book a lot. I bought it because I was planning a camping trip and it was a lot of help. I used almost all the food recipes which I found delish, especially the chili lime roasted corn on the cob! Yum! The only thing I can say that was slightly negative is that Ms. Menicucci's examples and tips are for people who backpack camp. Hiking into the wilderness and setting up camp where ever. I'm more of the drive up to my campsite and pitch my tent at a camp site with a number kind of person. So some of her tips and advice were not really relevant to my excursion.

However, for those girls (and guys!) who are really in to roughing it, this book offers loads of helpful ideas and great EASY recipes and fun ways to pass the time.

This book is both a perfect rainy afternoon read and a great reference to go back to again and again for information and inspiration. The author's writing style is easy and fun to read and by the end, no matter how urban you consider yourself, you'll be itching to pack up and head out to the great outdoors.

This is vintage Rykwert. A work of great erudition which is also quite accessible to the architecture student, On Adam's House traces back the idea of the primitive hut throughout history, and shows to what extent architecture always carried 'meaning' and significance in human culture. This book is another one of the major works, first published in 1972, to have effectively influenced the course of architecture in the 70's and beyond.

This strange and engaging book is an excavation of an old and cherished idea: that the original, Adamic conditions of human dwelling-in-the-world can be glimpsed in some basic form of primitive hut. Joseph Rykwert guides us backwards through the history of this idea, from Le Corbusier and Gropius, through Ruskin and Viollet-le-Duc, then through the thickets of Classicism [Laugier, Perrault, Blondel, etc.] and finally back to the atavistic architecture of archaic Greece and Egypt. Such a search for firstness is of course not a search for a building per se. It is a search for an archetype, or, more crucially, for a central feature of the human condition. Of course, every age in this survey stamps the idea with its own theoretical anxieties, so the idea, in its wild trajectory, has accreted a fascinating record of Western ideas about dwelling.

One particularly startling example of the development of this idea of the first human house is the difference between the ancient and the modern ideas about architectural ornament. As Rykwert renders it, the ancient temples replicated in stone the forms of earlier wooden structures that had become sanctified and meaningful through sacrificial rite and through ritual/liturgical association. So the origins of the neo-classical details that so decorously decorate the White House, for example, have their origins in ritual slaughter and rites of propitiation, investiture, and oath-making. In stark contrast to this brutal and significant immediacy is the modern tendency to think of ornament in purely aesthetic terms, [hence the modernist project to rid us of it, no doubt, because it has lost its meaning and become an encumberance].

A fascinating historical study.

In his "Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome" (2006), Rodney Stark chastise historians for not using "quantitative methods" (page 22). In his conclusion, Stark quotes the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. as having said: "almost all important [historical] questions are important precisely because they are not susceptible to quantitative answers," then Stark scathingly replied: "Such arrogance thrilled many of his listeners, as clever nonsense so often does. For others it prompted reflections on how someone so poorly trained had risen so high in the profession of history. In truth, many of the real significant historical questions demand quantitative answers" (page 209). In his "Cities of God," Stark gives us quantitative answers, he quotes a lot of data, making use of statistical models, and makes arguments which on the surface appear to be persuasive, if not down right convincing.

But what of his own numbers? It is interesting to note that the population figures which Stark gives in his "Cities of God" (2006) significantly differ from those figures in his earlier book "The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History" (1996). In the following list, I will give the population figure for "The Rise of Christianity" (1996) first, followed by the population figure given in his "Cities of God" (2006). All figures are for the period of 100 AD. All figures are from Stark's own books! According to Stark, the city of Rome had a population of 650,000 in his 1996 book, but only 450,000 in his 2006 book; Alexandria went from 400,000 to 250,000; Antioch from 150,000 to 100,000; Carathage from 90,000 to 100,000; Sardis stayed the same at 100,000; Smyrna went from 75,000 to 90,000; Athens from 30,000 to 75,000; Edessa from 80,000 to 75,000; Nisibis from 80,000 to 67,000; Cadis (Gadir) from 100,000 to 65,000; Syracuse from 80,000 to 60,000; Ephesus from 200,000 to 51,000; Corinth from 100,000 to 50,000; Memphis from 90,000 to 50,000; Caesarea Maritima remained the same at 45,000; Cordova the same at 45,000; Damascus the same at 45,000; Autun the same at 40,000; Pergamum from 120,000 to 40,000; Apamea from 125,000 to 37,000; Salamis stayed the same at 35,000; London from 40,000 to 30,000; and Milan from 40,000 to 30,000. It is very odd that the same author is willing to give significantly different population figures for the same cities during the same period. Nor did Stark give any explanation as to why the numbers are different.

On page 34, in his "Cities of God," Stark asks the question: "Did Rome have a million residents or only 200,000?" and in footnote 31, Stark cites: "Parkin, 1992; Russell, 1958." In "Demography and Roman Society" (1992), Tim Parkin writes: "For the city of Rome itself, a figure of between 750,000 and 1 million seems right" (page 5). And in a footnote he adds that "Russell (1958) 63-68, (1985) 8-25, however, gives a figure as ludicrously low as under 200,000" (page 162). These authors justify Stark's question: "Did Rome have a million residents or only 200,000?" (page 34). But on page 52, in his "Cities of God," Stark gives the population of Rome as 450,000, but he has no footnote this time, and he doesn't tell us how he reached his decision. He doesn't give any justification. So did he pick 450,000 out of thin air?

Sir Peter Hall, in his "Cities in Civilization" (1998), writes: "Precisely how big was ancient Rome ... historians must painstakingly make their deductions from what they know about numbers of houses and apartment blocks and the housing densities within them, volumes of water piped into the city, recipients of the grain dole, seating capacities of theaters and amphitheaters: all very indirect, and so potentially unreliable. Unsurprisingly, the estimates vary wildly, from the 250,000 of Ferdinand Lot to the 1,487,560 (plus slaves) of Giuseppe Lugli; but the great majority, for dates extending from the late Republican Age to the fourth century AD, fall in the range from three-quarters of a million to around one and a quarter million, most of them close to one million" (page 621). Thus Hall claims that the "great majority" of scholars opt for a figure between 750,000 and 1,250,000. In 1996, Rodney Stark put the population of the city of Rome just below the minimum (of the "great majority") at 650,000, but in 2006 he lowers his estimate even lower to 450,000.

Why does Stark claim that the "estimated" population in Rome was 650,000 in one book (1996), only to estimate it at 450,000 in another book (2006)? Why did he lower his estimate of Ephesus from 200,000 to 51,000? Are these numbers random, or was their some method to determine them? And how can his own estimate be almost ¼ of his previous estimate? Was Stark hoping that no one would compare his two books? I'm at a loss to understand him. Furthermore, he made such a big deal in his book (pages 15-23) as to how he was so much better than most historians in that unlike them, he actually follows the scientific method and understands how to use "quantitative methods" (page 22). He boasts that "the entire basis of this book is to assemble reliable and pertinent facts" (page 17).

Many years ago, I read Stark's article entitled "Epidemics, Networks and the Rise of Christianity" published in the journal "Semea" (56 [1992]:159-175), when it first came out. And because of that, I waited eagerly for his book, "The Rise of Christianity," to be published (1996). I'm no specialist, but I thought highly of his argument, it seemed well thought out and well presented. He writes well and presents lots of data (which, by its nature, is hard to corroborate), and so he is very persuasive. But anyone, even I, can compare numbers. The figure 650,000 is not that same as 450,000; and 200,000 is not the same as 51,000. Stark had an obligation to his readers to explain his methodology and why he is presenting new figures. He didn't do so, and I'm afraid that this failure makes it hard for me to trust his other quantitative analyses. Perhaps in some future book, he will explain his methodology and why it was necessary for him to alter his population figures from his 1996 to his 2006 book. But until then, I cannot recommend his research.

A lot of historical scholarship consists of perceiving historical phenomena and then working out plausible explanations for the phenomena. Such explanations are largely untested, but they often become accepted as "historical truth" when they are little more than "just so stories." The example from the final chapter of Schlesinger's "huge upswell" of popular democracy during the era of Andrew Jackson is a case in point. Going back and counting the votes from previous elections shows that the voter turnout in the Jackson era was actually lower than many previous elections.

It is all well and good to devise hypotheses to explain historical events, but they should not be accepted as truth unless they can be tested. Stark undertakes to test a number of historical hypotheses relating to the rise of early Christianity, and does so through statistical analysis. This entails a lot of spadework, but the results are worthwhile.

A lot of Stark's findings validate many of the hypotheses of previous scholarship, and this should lead to no controversy. A lot of his findings invalidate the hypotheses of "cutting edge" Biblical scholarship, and this should mean that Stark's book won't be profiled on prime time television.

Some of Stark's more interesting findings are: (1) Orthodox Christianity, not "Gnosticism" or some other "Lost Christianity" was the original form of the religion. (2) "Gnosticism" was a loopy, lunatic fringe blend of paganism and Christianity. (3) Orthodox Christians did not persecute paganism into oblivion. (4) Pentecost most likely did not result in 3,000 newly baptized Christians, but simply 3,000 wet Jews and pagans. (5) Paul did not invent Christianity and actually had very little to do with the spread of Christianity throughout the Empire. (6) Paul was much more successful in converting Jews to Christianity than in converting Gentiles. (7) Hellenized Jews provided large numbers of Christian converts during the first four centuries of Christianity.

Stark's writing, as always, is entertaining, educational, and thought provoking.

I am not a Christian, but I am interested in the history of Christianity. Rodney Stark, I've concluded, is probably the leading historian of Christianity and, best of all, he doesn't defend, proselytize. mythologize - he simply describes the history. And, surprisingly, according to Stark, the history of Christianity is a more positive force than many historians want to give it credit for.

Stark takes many contemporary historians, like the late Arthur Schlesinger, for their devotion to personal ideologies than to fact. As an example, Stark thoroughly dissects Schlesinger's misunderstanding of Andrew Jackson's popularity in a Pulitzer Prize winning book.

With that quality in mind, Stark debunks many popular, but apparently false, myths about early Christianity. Factoids: many Roman emperors appointed many pagans to political office during the ascendancy of Christianity in Rome, contrary to the myth that Christians forced paganism out of existence.

The book is rich in historical detail, some of it drawn from surprising sources: the inscriptions on ancient tombstones. The basic theme is that Christianity became an urban religion that ultimately conquered the failing Roman Empire. Another surprise: the larger cities developed Christian populations sooner then smaller cities.

Overall, for any student of history, Stark provides a valuable contribution. There is no overtly religious content in the book, so people with an aversion or animus to religion can read it comfortably.

Jerry

The author uses quantitative data on big cities circa the first century or so to test a number of hypotheses about early Christianity. His results are interesting and convincing, but there are no big revelations here. The most surprising finding was that Paul likely targeted Hellenized Jews, not Gentiles, and that the Jewish element of Christianity persisted for centuries.

Overall, a competent and readable book, but it would not be near the top of my list of books on early Christianity.

--Alan Zundel, the HeartAwake Center

Rodney Stark writes well. On topics that can turn even talented writers boring, Stark's books consistently arouse interest and curiosity. His books are smooth, easy to read, and avoids cumbersome language. As a result, it usually takes me about half the time to finish books by Stark compared to other books related to classical history. Cities of God is no exception.

Stark begins by given descriptions of all the significant cities in the ancient Roman world. These descriptions alone are quite valuable and provide insight into the Roman world and day-to-day life within it. But his collection of cities is just the beginning, as Stark goes on to explain how they became Cities of God.

The subtitled of the book is "The Real Story of How Christianity Became Urban Movement and Conquered Rome." True enough, but another subtitle could be, "How to Use Statistics to Test Historical Propositions." Stark is a big believer in the use of statistics and math to solve histories elusive problems. The extent to which he succeeds I will leave to readers and his peers statisticians. But the book is an interesting read just to see how such an approach to history could work. For my part, I thought some of Stark's propositions, such as that cities closer to Jerusalem were Christianized sooner, that Hellenistic cities Christianized sooner than Roman ones, and that large cities Christianized sooner than smaller ones, were well established.

I am less confident in his conclusions about certain mystery religions "paving the way" for monotheism. Even if the numbers reflect ancient reality, the conclusion does not seem to follow from the premise. However, Stark's arguments about Gnosticism and related heresies being late and derivative are well taken.

Stark also continues to advance two theories he mentioned in his The Rise of Christianity. First, he emphasizes relationships and the practical usefulness of a religion over its beliefs and dogma in explaining its spread. In Cities of God, he seems to give more importance to belief than before. This is a useful corrective, as belief often helps explain the emphasis on relationship and practical usefulness in a religion. Second, Stark believes that the Gentile mission was not all that successful at first and that most early Christians were Jewish Diaspora converts. He gives more evidence for his theory here, but anyone looking to test the theory will still have to look elsewhere for fuller discussions.

All told, Stark makes some good arguments, fails to prove others but raises good questions in the process, and leaves the reader with more knowledge and insight than when he or she started.

While this book does feature references to three-form deities divided into God and Goddess, it is not appropriate for most Wiccans or those working from a Wiccan background; nor is it appropriate for those who think religion or spirituality need to be taken seriously to be legitimate. This doesn't make it a bad book (it's actually excellent, in my opinion), and it doesn't make people who dislike it bad people; I would also say that the New Testament is not appropriate for Jews, although it is written as dealing with the same deity.

This is a book for the sacred fool, the polytheists who incorporate humor into their practice, the pagan on a budget who can't afford (and doesn't want) to practice skyclad in an open field on a full moon night surrounded by silver tools. It's a book for people who-- like me --find carbonated energy drinks to be just as appropriate sacrifices to certain spirits as mead and wine are to others.

A little about me: I never take anything I read as gospel. I am not a "pagan" and I do not identify myself with any particular path. I'm a wandering mystic. I just kind of read everything and take what rings truth in me and assimilate it into my personal belief structure.

This book fills a very real need in mystical literature for people like me. I am the sort of person who generally prefers cities over the country (although I do enjoy returning to nature occasionally) and so it is hard for me to connect with very nature oriented pagan literature. When you spend most of your days walking around a city, full of concrete, alley ways, faces, and buildings you don't often run into a babbling brook, or a natural clearing of trees, or a patch of clover. It's just a different world and Raven Kaldera expertly shows that spirituality can be found anywhere, even in a dirty alleyway when Skram whispers in your ear and you notice a shadowy figure a ways away and suddenly feel you should be elsewhere. Why can't cockroaches and squirrels and pigeons be totem animals? Some of my friends respect this book merely due to how perfectly his description of the squirel totem person fits me. LOL

This is not for the average tree-hugging dirt worshiping hippie nature child pagan. This is for those of us who just march to the beat of our own drummer and find spirituality EVERYWHERE we go, not just in the places you'd expect to find it.

Give this book a chance. Seriously. This guy has some fantastic ideas even if you don't adopt his beliefs in rote.

After reading this book I have found that much of the content applies to ideas such a the ones expressed in the Satanic Bible. If you do not know, Modern LaVeyan Satanism originated from Paganism so there is definatly major similarities. I enjoyed this book and thought it was a good read especially for a Modern Satanist. I am eager to start combining the 2 religions with this book. I have conducted many rituals involving transfer of energy for ones good fortune and have been successful everytime so these are some new ideas that I am willing to try. By the way this is not only for people living in big cities like new york, it has instructions on what to do in place more rural outside the city limits as well.

I liked this book, for many of the reasons that those who gave it poor reviews disliked it.

First some disclaimers:

1. I'm not a Wiccan. I follow a very different magickal/spiritual path, but I see value in learning insights from other traditions

2. I'm a dyed in the polyester urbanite. The raw natural world gives me hives.

3. I have academic degrees in folklore, semiotics and mythology and regard things from these perspectives as well as my spiritual experiences.

First, to those who object in general to the introduction of "urbanism" or technology into "earth centered religions": do you use a knife in your rituals? Metal doesn't grow on trees or lay about waiting to be found. It's manufactured using a very technological process from raw ore. Use a wand? Manufactured too, unless you just point a stick you found at things. It is in our "nature" as a species (wordplay VERY MUCH intended) to alter our environment through the use of tools. That does not remove the things we make from nature. (Gasoline? Just a long-dead dinosaur run through some tools, my friends. A lot of hard-to-deal-with waste products, but it's basically recycling!). Unless your version of earth-centered translates to going back to an australopicathine level of technology (and if it does, I pity you), you've modified nature to practice your art. And so it should be, as that is our role as a species -- to interact with our world in this fashion (while maintaining respect for the unity and essential sameness of all). That we've been out of balance in the past, implementing our technology without regard for its impact on nature is wrongandshould be redressed. But let's not throw the baby away with the bathwater. (BTW, use soap? Technologist!)However, I do agree with the reviewer who pointed out that you shouldn't have gasoline on your altar if you're lighting candles. Spiritual should not equal stupid.

Next, as to the three aspects of god and goddess in the modern environment: I freaking loved them. Why? couple of reasons. First, let's point out that the historical forms of these entities (Diana, Isis, the Horned God, etc.) aren't REALLY their essences. They're representations of principles of masculine and feminine traits and energies that make it easier for people to relate with (whether we believe those essences have an existence independent from ourselves or not). I think most of us don't live in an egyptian-flavored environment, so it's probably easier for us to relate to an urban, modern female archetype than, say, Isis or Hathor (unless you're one of those fantasy-fiction inspired, fluff-bunny, historical reconstructionist/re-enacter types. Which would be silly.)

Next, why the hell do you think people worship gods (or in my case bargain with spirits) in the first place??? Certainly we want to express gratitude and admiration for the world they manifest, but we also want their help in our everyday lives! And so did our bucolic ancestors. Praying for a good harvest is less important in my life (and the lives of most urban folks) than praying for the inspiration to get a job/clean my house (Sarge), finding good parking spot when I need one (Squat) or getting laid (Skrew). Different representations of the same essences for different contexts and needs. Simple, really. And doesn't at all prevent one from calling on the historical representations of these entities when their intervention is more appropriate. And, if you think about it, how is calling on the goddess of dumpster-diving different than a hunter-gatherer calling on his/her spirits or gods of hunting to find a straight stick in the forest to make a good spear? Different jungles is the only difference I see...

I'm not saying this book should be taken word for word -- some of it I find goofy, but endearingly so. I AM saying that it makes an important contribution to pagan/earth-centered/whatever spirituality -- as our environment has changed so has our symbolism and our daily concerns. As they change, so must our understandings of how universal principles act on us and how we relate to them. The book is a roadmap (or perhaps travelogue) of how the authors did just that. And it should betaken for being just that, as well as inspiration for each reader to start his own trip through the simultaneous realms of city and spirit.

I snapped this book up because it looked like just the sort of book for me: adapting to life outside the woods and learning to practice witchcraft in my apartment instead of expansive backyard. I was pleased with the amount of useful information, such as affordable herbs and materials for spellwork. I was also fascinated by the chart on the magical significance of piercings.

Like any book on witchcraft, though, Urban Primitive isn't without its fair share of cheese. The Urban Triple Goddess and God kind of threw me for a loop, as did their continuous praise of trashpicking. Pagans already get a bad rap as it is; we don't need to add "dumpster divers" to our reputation!

If you ignore the goofy bits, though, this book is really useful. It gives advice on the practical things in life: finding and keeping a job/apartment/car/etc, protection from the chaotic energy of a populous city, even working around roommates and close neighbors. Definitely a good investment for your pagan reading collection - just remember to take some of it with a grain of salt.