Northwestern Books

What is more interesting about this slim text is not so much the content, although Peuchet's essay is in its own way perceptive, but the unintentional and not very flattering insight into Marx's method of selectively doctoring the original to say things it never intended.

For example, on page 50, Peuchet says, "I undertook a comprehensive study of this subject" to which Marx adds - in Peuchet's voice! - "I found that, short of total reform of the organization of our current society, all other attempts would be in vain," a sentence Peuchet, a police administrator, never would have written. Whether Marx is right is not the point; the point is he fabricates a sweeping social analysis and puts his words in someone else's mouth as an "official" translation. This is breathtakingly dishonest and makes you wonder how often Marx played loose with facts and figures in more significant works too.

The introduction of the book is more insightful than Marx's (Peuchet's) essay. On the other hand, being able to see how Marx approaches the issue of suicide makes this book very important. Marx uses his conflict approach to distinguish how suicide differs between the prolitariate and bourgeoisie classes; also, the anomic despair and objectification (especially of women) brought on by the impact of a capitalist ruled society is prevalent. I would recomend this book to the following groups of people: anyone interested in conflict theory pertaining to the topic of suicide; Anyone interested in understanding how women are objectified (more so than men and therefore more prone to commit suicide) under capitalist social conditions; and to anyone (students in particular, but not necessarily) who wants to start and finish a book in the same session (the english translation is only 60+ pg's), at the same time,learning something about the foundation of their own society (the economy) and the impact it has on them. Not strong academic material, but useful none-the-less.

This essay is truly fascinating. The majority of it was actually written by Peuchet (a French statistician in the 1700s), but there are certain changes that Marx provides himself. Additionally, you can see undertones of Marx's feelings in regards to exploitation of the proletariat. He doesn't argue that proles are the only ones who commit suicide, because that obviously isn't true; I think the point here is simply that society needs to be better examined. Check out this quote from the essay; it's pretty darn cool: "What kind of society is it wherein one finds the most profound loneliness in the midst of millions of people?"

In the "Tango Player" Christoph Hein skillfully adumbrates the grey atmosphere of East German society. While not as engrossing as his "Distant Lover," which I'd easily recommend over this work, "Tango Player" is still a well-written and interesting glimpse into the former East Germany. In 1968, a year of remarkable political tumult, one would expect the main character, Peter Dallow, a historian, to be fully engaged in the events of his times. Instead we see through Dallow a refractory image of 1968: disengaged, socially sclerotic, and remarkably apolitical, even after being released from prison for taking part in the performance of what the State considered a defamatory song. This is one of Hein's greatest strengths: making the observations of alienated eyes somehow sympathetic. Not that Dallow is a sympathetic character, but he makes sense because Hein is so skilled.

This is a sad book. There are no heroes, only a grey world, a place where politics has wiped away the character of humanity. The main character, Dallow, moves around in the novel devoid of emotion, of feeling, compassion and sensitivity. He is the void of the GDR personified, engaging in loveless relationships, relating only on the superficial level.

There is a Kafka-esque humor in the book when the reader encounters the two government officials. They are consistently indistinguishible, a Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum pair who harass Dallow into getting back into his old career path following his prison release. ("I was just the Tango player" he constantly reminds the reader).

Strangely enough, this book was written about a time that could be now. Dallow is only physically engaged in his various sexual encounters. He is isolated from others, his relationship with his parents pointless and weary. In our time and place, we have ipods and cell phones to isolate us. Tear back the layers of our digital distractions and we'll find Dallow in our modern world. This book is haunting if you can stand back and see how it compares to our new century.

Why should one read books about a political system that is dead and gone? The answer is, of course, that it is not so dead and gone after all. Communism may have collapsed as a political force, but the countries of eastern Europa are still full of the people it has created. People who have just been released from prison are like an ownerless dog, Hein's narrator says, constantly looking for a new master to caress and beat them. Maybe that is how quite a lot of people feel after the Iron Curtain has come down... Peter Dallow has just been released from prison in the East Germany of 1968; he had played the piano in a political cabaret, and a tango about the ageing ruler of the country had so infuriated the authorities that all members of the group are sentenced to spend two years in prison. Dallow still feels he was innocent, because he wasn't even a member, he had just stepped in for the man who usually played the piano. Hein's book is about the months after Dallow's release from prison.

The mood is similar to the one in Coetzee's "Disgrace": Dallow used to be a lecturer at Leipzig university, and his attitude towards his students seems to have been one of contempt and cynicism. Now he is in a state of disgrace, people feel uneasy in his presence and want to get rid of him. The Communist state, however, will not let go of him: The authorities, the secret service, the police, are annoyed that Dallow does not want to live on as if nothing had happened. Nobody could escape the system, no matter how hard he or she tried. Actually they keep trying to force Dallow to return to his post at the university. Maybe people like him are even more useful for a dictatorship than those who never got into trouble: Dallow is broken and cynical, he will never resist the government again; in contrast to practically all the people around him he is completely indifferent towards the hope for reform embodied in the Prague Spring.

Dallow's perspective offers a shocking picture of the state of human relationships in his country: Here too cynicism abounds. Love is only mentioned once - as an impossible dream. Sex is regarded as a purely physical need ("I feel like having sex with you."), and young girls gladly trade it for a place to spend the night. People leave each other just like that. Most characters seem to be scarred after lost battles. This, of course, is Dallow's perspective, and he refuses to cherish any hopes at all. Maybe Hein wanted to show what East Germany was like without the hope for change. The book was first published in 1989, when this change was finally happening...

When I was much younger, I went through a stage where I devoured everything by Heinrich Boll I could get my hands on. His thin memoir What's to Become of the Boy must've been one of those volumes I read, because, taking up my old copy after nearly 30 years, I see my marginalia in it. But I'm afraid I had no recollection of the contents, and so rereading it was just like a first reading.

I wonder if I remembered so little of it because there's so little in it. Boll's memoir covers his last four or so years of formal schooling (equivalent to American high school). What comes across loud and clear is the poverty the Boll family endured during these years and their undying and uncompromised detestation of everything that the Nazis stood for. by the mid-1930s, the Nazi influence was increasingly felt in Cologne, Boll's hometown. As a student, Boll realized that his teachers, most of whom had served in WWI and brought a strong dose of nationalism into the classroom, were schooling their students in death, preparing them for the war that was coming. Boll resisted with everything he had. As he tells us, "The Nazis had become an eternity, the war was to become one, and war plus Nazis were a double eternity--yet I wanted to try to live beyond those four eternities" (p. 62).

An admirable ambition, especially in one so young. But the resistance to political and cultural entrapment stood Boll in good stead later on as a post-war writer.

For a book that purports to be a memoir, though, Boll seems oddly missing. His short memoir (a mere 80 pages) recounts exterior events and mentions in rather general terms interior responses, but one doesn't close the book with a sense that one's really gotten to know the man Boll. Perhaps this is because he believed he'd revealed himself adequately in his novels.

Three stars.

he memoir is

I decided the other day to give many of my old Heinrich Boll editions a second and third reading both to preserve both their memory and also to strengthen my own mind. Few other authors can educate and entertain in the manner of this German master who survived immersion in the cauldron of the Third Reich. His career was devoted to preserving the past and helping us prevent what could be. What's to Become of the Boy is a tender novella in which we hear of the young author's aspirations to become an writer in the midst of corrupted teachers, students, and even a would be apprenticeship at a coffee concern. We discover the way in which a normal, hard-working, Catholic family took the news of a monster coming to power--a monster whose work would bring down the fall of their people, their nation, and discredit a thousand years worth of civilization. Boll's mother, with unbelievable intuition, upon hearing that Hitler has come to power, announces that war is coming. This short story plus is a brief, snippet of time which demands being devoured at once. Upon opening it, I am certain that you won't be able to stop reading it. If you are unfamiliar with this legend then I envy you and wish I could experience his genius for the first time all over again.

After almost 50 years, Boll looks back at his teens from 15 to 19, from 1933-37 in Germany, coinciding with Hitler's rise to power. Boll writes about the importance of books and intelligence in his childhood. These are not just the books in class ("Yes, school, I know -- I'll get back to that."), but more importantly outside reading: Dostoevsky, Dickens, Haecker. His family made every effort to provide his reading. Present in this account is his sense of humor (despite the foreboding of Hitler and the Hitler Youth), as well as the fighting of the meaningless bureaucracy; for example bribing to keep his brother from participating in any of the Youth activities. This includes the Boll we see later, watching "Hands in pockets, eyes open, street hawkers, peddlers, markets, churches, museums ...". From classroom efforts to condense Mein Kampf, Boll learned brevity; perhaps the only positive thing about the Nazi's during this oppressive time. Boll stands as an individual against the totalitarian climate. I think we are all pleased that Boll pursued a career of "Something to do with books".

A fair review of continental and existential thought within the united states. Lacks the foundational precepts that allowed for the rise of influential thinkers of modern existential philosophy... such as Lesiu Niemoczynski, Melissa Anders, and friends from the East Stroudsburg University and Northampton academic circles.

This is a smart analysis of the introduction of Sartre's ideas into the American academy. Fulton sketches clearly three stages in the reception. She demonstrates how, after initial attempts to ignore Sartrean existentialism, philosophers in America were forced to examine his work. Often, the reception of Sartre was conditioned by the state of American philosophy (at this time its mania for analytic and the Cold War situation). Fulton also indicates how existentialism resonated particularly strongly with women philosophers, and how the slow translation process of Sartre's key works were part of the reception of Sartre. This book will be useful for any reader interested in the reception of existentialism in the US and for the history of philosophy in the United States after the Second World War.

There are many ways to get to grips with the complicated realities of the post-WW2 Eastern Europe but reading Ashes and Diamonds is arguably the best of them. Rather then reading some dry history book which would necessary have less feeling for the stories of individual people, Ashes and Diamonds tells history exactly by concentrating on the peculiar life stories of the main characters. It shows how the unsettled and chaotic situation of postwar Poland gave rise to some weird coalitions in politics, strange passions or totally unreasonable expectations of the people who had to live then. Since we can afford the luxury of informed hindsight and already know that by 1949 Poland became communist, it is interesting to watch Poland in the period when things were not at all clear yet.

Jerzy Andrzejewski's Ashes and Diamonds is a complete rip-off if you are in it for the diamonds. My copy only included the ashes part. After getting over the fact that I had been duped into buying all ashes and no diamonds, I began to enjoy the beauty of the ashes.
Andrzejewski does a spectacular job in presenting ashes. The ashes in this book are the remains of Poland after the Second World War. The Poles seek to pick up the pieces of their war- torn country and move on towards a "new Poland", one that embodies freedom and happiness. However the road to this promised land is very elusive, and people often blindly pick sides in a new battle to define Poland. The result is only more ashes.
The part of the book that really made it worth reading for me was its fresh look at the heart of mankind. In my opinion, Andrzejewski does not present a people who held on to morality and goodness through even the toughest of times. He presents a people who, when pressured, revealed the predominately black makeup of a human heart that allows a person to do evil in order to survive or merely to get ahead. Some characters deal with this blackness in themselves and in others, often feeling let down and confused. One example of this is in a conversation between Podgorski and Kossecki after the war is over. Kossecki is burdened after the war with the knowledge that, when in the camp, he did not behave as the honorable man he thought himself to be before the war. He took part in beating people to save his own hide. In their conversation, Kossecki looks for answers to make himself feel okay. Then Podgorski, speaking about the time before the war, says "People had confidence in themselves, in their courage and their morality. Certain things seemed impossible. Life then simply did not present such desperate alternatives. A man had a right to think of himself as decent and incapable of exceeding certain limits. Only criminals did so. But nowadays I've met so many people who broke down and failed this or that test that I don't attach much importance to what a man thinks of himself. Until a man faces the test he can deceive himself endlessly." Kossecki is disappointed in the blackness of his own heart and Podgorski is disappointed in others who let him down. Through some character's painful realization that people are often not as good as they would like to believe, I was forced to ask myself how I would react in such horrible circumstances. Would a terrible situation reveal diamonds or ashes in my own heart? I believe Andrzejewski's greatest success in Ashes and Diamonds is his ability to make me question myself, even though the novel is set in a foreign land and in a time period I will never live in.
However, in my opinion Andrzejewski does a poor job of developing the characters. There are just way too many of them to really know much at all about any of them (I counted 47). It is a pretty good sign that there are too many characters when you have to keep notes just to remember who the main characters are. It is possibly lacking in plot as well. Perhaps through predominately using dialogue and not action, Andrzejewski was attempting to offer a glimpse into the minds of the characters. If this is the case, he could have done a better job by limiting the number of characters and spending more time with each of them. It would seem that if a lot of dialogue was included at the expense of plot, we would at least know more about the characters. Unfortunately this is not the case.
Overall, I enjoyed Andrzejewski's beautiful presentation of ashes. However, if he intended to complement the ashes with diamonds, I missed it. From the young gang of boys, about whom it would be hard to conjure up anything good to say, to the older party leaders who seemed lost and were often driven by personal success rather than by a desire for a free and happy people, they all seemed ashier than a lotionless Arab on a cold day. If you open Ashes and Diamonds to find diamonds inside, perhaps you will have better chances looking in a box of crackerjacks.

I love this book. Ms Tanning writes with such a zest for life and creativity that I find it just spills over and communicates to the reader.
She lived an amzing life and came a long way from sleepy small town America. There was obviously a determination or a restless something at work.
Mosty of all I just enjoy the way she writes - it's a lively quircky style but to me it got across the kind of person I imagine Dorothea Tanning to be.
A work of character by a character -

Indifferent writing, a surprising lack of insight into the incredible milieu in which she moved, and gratuitously catty remarks towards the great Leonora Carrington (an earlier Ernst protege who Tanning apparently feels threatened by 50 years after the fact) mar what should have been a very interesting memoir of a remarkable life. Tanning, Max Ernst's companion of 30 years and a compelling painter in her own right, was at the heart of one of the great artistic movements of the 20th Century, but this work reads like a flat travel log of places gone to and roll call of persons met. The paucity of detail,personal anectdotes, and characterization of any of the luminaries mentioned mark Tanning's bio as a great disappointment.
--A two star book with one star added because any information on this artistic epoch provided by an active participant has to be considered an important contribution.

This well-written and well-researched book is important for anyone interested in painting at the turn of the century, in the position of woman artists at that time, or in Paula Modersohn-Becker herself. It also offers insights into the life and psyche of the famous poet Rainer Maira Rilke. Modersohn-Becker suffers from being known primarily though "Requiem for a Friend," a poem written about her by Rilke, whose view is colored by his own needs and beliefs. Torgersen shows that far from only having made a good beginning, as Rilke claimed, Modersohn-Becker had developed a style of her own and had created a number of arresting and original paintings. Rilke also claimed that in attempting to reconcile marriage and a career in art, Modersohn-Becker had chosen wrongly. Torgersen traces Modersohn-Becker's handling of her husband's attempt to assert authority over her, and shows that she had convinced him to allow space for her art in their marriage. This, too, was a remarkable achievement for her time. Art historians and feminists ought to read this book.

This well-written and well-researched book is important for anyone interested in painting at the turn of the century, in the position of woman artists at that time, or in Paul Modersohn-Becker herself. It also offers insights into the life and psyche of the famous poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Modersohn-Becker suffers from being known primarily through "Requiem for a Friend," a poem written about her by Rilke, whose view is colored by his own needs and beliefs. Torgersen shows that far from only having made a good beginning, as Rilke claimed, Modersohn-Becker had developed a style of her own and had created a number of arresting and original paintings. Rilke also claimed that in attempting to reconcile marriage and a career in art, Modersohn-Becker had chosen wrongly. Torgersen traces Modersohn-Becker's handling of her husband's attempt to to assert authority over her, and shows that she had convinced him to allow space for her art in their marriage. This, too, was a remarkable achievement for her time. Art historians and feminists ought to read this book.

This is a very good book that deserves a higher sales ranking and a better review than it has at the moment. What Smith does is compile a very eclectic set of martyr stories, illustrating the facts that (1) not all martyrs are religiously motivated and (2) not all martyrs are nice people. Some ARE blood-thirsty killers. And it is not the cause that makes someone a martyr. It is two important things: absolute certainty that the martyr is right and everyone else is wrong, and a belief that martyrdom somehow makes the cause more noble. Both of these facts are scary.
As Smith states more than once, the martyr is the ultimate egotist: he/she is right, the world is wrong, and he/she is showing the world something with his/her self-sacrifice. But that cannot be true: there have been lots of martyrs for lots of causes--in fact, even diametrically opposed causes. The Allies who died in World War II could call themselves martyrs for freedom, and the Nazis who died could call themselves martyrs for Nazism or Germany. Who decides who is a martyr...and what cause is noble?
The martyr is in the additional tricky position of wanting and needing to die without APPEARING to want to die. That is just suicide. The martyr must think that death is perhaps avoidable, and also that death will mean a greater success than life could have accomplished. It is a fine line to walk, one that ultimately not only fails but is contradictory.
People who respect martyrs, or who want to be martyrs, should read this book. Also, read my new "Violence and Culture" (Wadsworth 2005), that puts martyrdom and other forms of ideological violence in perspective.
And remember, terrorists often think of themselves as martyrs, and martyrs often think of the ones who kill them as terrorists.

Lacey Baldwin Smith has crafted an engaging book that investigates great martyrs through the centuries. Although the book is subtitled, "The Story of Martyrdom in the Western World," it is rather a careful review of primarily English speaking "martyrs", and the events that lead up to their demise.

Some of the greats, such as Thomas Becket, do not bear well to close scrutiny. Indeed, some across as ravenous murderers: John Brown, in particular, is revealed to be little better than a common terrorist. But many of these individuals had great stage presence and oratory power they used to their advantage when finally put before the docket. Many also had an incredible ego and were incapable of understanding their opponents concerns or views. And not a few wanted martyrdom and forced their opponents' hands to achieve their goal.

The author's selection of martyrs (because he focuses upon English speakers) is a bit uneven. However, the author's short digression into martyrs of the Holocaust was interesting and ethically valuable.

The author provides photos or illustrations of the main protagonists which help to imagine them in more human light. The endnotes and index are excellent, and the writing itself is entertaining if a bit caustic on occasion. Omitted is much discussion of the political campaigns that helped these fools and traitors be designated as martyrs. Despite this, Smith has created a unique, fun, and educational book you're sure to enjoy.

I consider this book a modern masterpiece on a subject still controversial and shameful to Latvians. His record of this black time in Latvia's history is packed full of very specific details including dates, names, and places.

This is a hard book to read for those people who believe that all Latvians were innocent victims of the USSR's
aggressions. While that is true for most Latvians, including my relatives, it is not true of all Latvians. Press exposes the role of the Riga police in rounding up Jews and the fact that everyone knew that their Jewish neighbors were dying in work camps. He also gives abundant evidence that the Aizsargi were not all noble
patriots fighting for Latvia; in fact, it seems that there were a good number of murderous thugs among them.

This was not an easy book for me to read. I read it while in Riga for the first time - it was very hard to admit
that such horrible things happened in a place that had had a magical aura for me for so many years. I think
Latvians, like Germans, must continue to reconcile themselves to seek the truth about our roots, no matter
what that means. Fortunately, we have an excellent guide in Dr Press.

The author wants the book to be a memorial to all Jews that died on Latvian soil. In the "Preface to the English Edition," the author claims that Latvians, on the whole, are totally anti-Semitic. However, the origins of such beliefs cannot be determined. The author believes this to be true of the Latvians, during pre-WWII Latvia and the new Latvia of the 1990's. I wonder if things are so black and white.

This book is a combination of history and a memoir. There are footnotes and a bibliography. However, if a reader is looking for an objective, historical view of this topic, it is not found here. The author recounts his personal experiences during WWII. It is remarkable how he and other Jews survived.

The author does point out that after WWII, some people who were in a Nazi concentration camps found themselves in Soviet concentration camps.

I read this after being accepted into Northwestern. It didn't quite give me an idea of what Northwestern is like; few of the opinions in it are particularly insightful or revealing. Most of them are vague, general statements about narrow subjects to which I felt only indifference. It also seems that, in an attempt to show some sort of balance or contrast, some views are given more credence than they are actually owed. Overall, after reading it, you might get the feeling that you didn't actually retain most of the information it gave you. A better source of information would be any human connection you have with Northwestern. If you don't have a friend at Northwestern, join a Facebook group and start asking questions; the current students are more than happy to answer, and their answers are usually more in depth and reflective of your true questions. Nevertheless, this book makes a thoughtful gift to anyone who will soon attend Northwestern.

College Prowler books are well worth the investment for students and parents investigating colleges. They give a detailed picture of the school, written from current students' perspectives. Once you have narrowed your list of schools to 10 or fewer, I would recommend buying the College Prowler titles for all of those. It's a small investment compared to the cost of visiting the campus, application fees, and -- of course -- TUITION!