University of Minnesota Books

With virtual reality (VR) -- or at least the promise of it -- fast becoming a fixture in the public imagination, books like this are vitally important in shaping how we think about, make use of, and create future technologies of representation. Drawing from a remarkable breadth of cultural, technical, and philosophical thought, Ken Hillis's Digital Sensations remains direct and accessible as it deftly weaves together theory, insight, and imagination to understand VR as a technology with specific cultural and historical origins (origins that go farther back than computers, TV, even the telephone and telegraph). Hillis makes a passionate, convincing case that these roots influence the way VR is currently used (in everything from military simulations to avant-garde art installations) and, perhaps more important, how it is publicly perceived: as a utopian, anything-is-possible means of escaping our bodies and the materiality of our lives to achieve a kind of electronic nirvana. Recognizing this as a commercial and ideological vision, Digital Sensations positions itself in one sense as an antidote to that hype, calling our attention both to the far-fetched claims of VR visionaries and to the ethical implications of a technology that depends for its effects on a cunning substitution of illusion for place. Yet the book is not a bringdown; if anything, Hillis helps us think rigorously about the implications and potential of VR, counterbalancing the simplistic, domesticated perspective that characterizes VR simply as a new form of mindless entertainment, virtual singles bar, or faster way of commuting to the electronic office. In chapters on contemporary theory as well as histories of optics and vision, Hillis scrutinizes each component of VR (space, place, body, identity, embodiment, language, and metaphor) calling for a careful consideration of what the desire for a "leap into cyberspace" might mean politically for those who go -- and those who are left behind.

Travelers on the Northern Pacific Railway got much more than a ticket to travel when they chose to ride: they often received gourmet dining in the dining car, as William A. McKenzie illustrates in his Dining Car to the Pacific: The "Famously Good" Food of the Northern Pacific Railway. The Northern's service was widely regarded as the best in the industry - and source materials from railroad records of the 1860s blends with memoirs of meals to recreate the experience - complete with over 150 recipes used on the line, many developed for or by Northern Pacific. McKenzie's nearly thirty years as a PR manager and corporate historian for the railroad lends expertise to his review and organization of the company's archival records for this lovely survey, while his wife Violet tested and modified the dishes for use at home.

Reading "Down & Out" was like looking through a window onto a fascinating world I never even knew existed. I especially enjoyed how much the book focuses on people who inhabited Skid Row--how they lived, slept, ate, worked--and the culture that grew up around them just decades ago. The author has a knack for putting you there, with sounds and smells and great details, and the tone is friendly and smart, and not at all dry or scholarly. The photos are great, too. I keep this book out on my coffeetable, though sometimes visitors to my home get so engrossed in the book and I have to take it away from them.

This would be a good read for anybody who likes really interesting, hidden slices of history, but it's a must for anybody who lives in the Twin Cities area--especially downtown. It gives you a whole new perspective. You'll never walk around down there and see the streets the same again.

Early Candlelight was written over a hundred years ago and is a wonderful story about Fort Snelling in St Paul Minnesota, around the time when people were still settling there. It is about a girl whose family lives outside the fort. It tells about numerous happenings, with the soldiers and their wives, the indians, and even the traders in the area. Eventually leading to a romance at the end. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

This relatively short, but meaty, academic work is an illuminating and invaluable study of Jewish power, as practiced in the context of the European Dark Ages. The author's purpose in writing this book was to demolish the official, politically-motivated interpretation of Jewish history which presents Jews as Europe's eternal, blameless victims (and thus deserving of present-day benefits and deference). Professor Bachrach succeeds in his intention and accomplishes something great: true history, unclouded by political correctness, ethnic revisionism and collective wisdom. This is a revolutionary work of scholarship, because the truths it reveals contradict everything that 20th century propaganda has made us think we know about Jewish history. The Dark Ages in Europe was almost a golden age for Jewry, and of the few attempts made to thwart Jewish interests, every last one was defeated.

Prof. Bachrach purposely set out to challenge what he called the "lachrymose conception" of Jewish historiography whose unvarying theme is two millenia of suffering and persecution. As Mr. Bachrach well knew, this traditional tale of woe was not the whole story, especially for his period of specialty in early medieval Europe. For the purposes of this book, Prof. Bachrach takes as his area of study the several Germanic kingdoms established in the ruins of the Roman Empire in Western Europe, from the late 400s to the fragmentation of the Carolingian Empire in the late 800s. His findings are shocking.

Like most people I think, my knowledge of the period in question was comprised only of the deeds of certain great monarchs and the various wars and Völkerwanderung of the barbarian peoples, with a touch of Hollywood history thrown in for good measure. In my misconception, the early medieval period was a time of chaos, degradation and endless warfare, when barbarians in chain mail drank mead from the skulls of their enemies and Jews were hunted down for sport. Prof. Bachrach paints an entirely different picture. The Europe we see in this book is one of sophisticated legal systems, advanced economies with international reach, urbane monarchs, intellectual prelates, and a multicultural tolerance that rivaled any modern day Western city. It is that advantaged position of the Jews that most shocks the uninformed reader.

Although this book deals with several kingdoms over the course of a few hundred years, one overwhelming theme emerges from this study: the Jewish community enjoyed a tolerated, protected, and even privileged position in early medieval western Europe. Across the centuries and nations in question we see Jews holding some of the highest offices in the state and in the army, where they exercised power over Christians. They had complete religious freedom as well as their own legal system where Jewish criminals would be judged by Jewish judges. They had enough confidence in their position to denounce Christianity in the streets and wage a very successful campaign of proselytization. They published and circulated the filthiest defamations of Jesus Christ, without any fear of retribution. They owned Christian slaves, converted them to Judaism, engaged in the slave trade, even going so far as to kidnap Christians, castrate them and sell them to the Moslems. The common market day in one place couldn't be held on Saturday, out of consideration for the Jews, but it was held on Sunday. They carried weapons, and didn't hesitate to use their armed might in pursuit of their aims and in support of their protectors. Jewish loyalty was never a reliable commodity though, as they surrendered several Spanish cities to the invading Moors and gave up Frankish cities to the Vikings, because those actions were beneficial to the Jewish community. One convert to Judaism who worked for the Moslems forced occupied Spanish Christians to convert to Judaism or Islam, or be killed. The Jewish community's wealth, industry and international relationships endeared them to the monarchs, who were as deferential and submissive to them as any American politician, and what their tax contributions couldn't accomplish, their bribery could. The Jewish community enjoyed a plethora of legal and tax exemptions that made them the legal equal, if not the superior, of any man in Europe. Although certain bishops tried to curb Jewish power over Christians, specifically in the matter of the slave trade, they were invariably defeated by the monarchs. That is the salient and startling point of this book: of the very few monarchs who tried to institute or enforce anti-Jewish laws or even minor prohibitions on Jewish behavior, not one of them succeeded.

My very few questions and quibbles are so minor as not to deserve mention here. This is a must-have work of history and a true classic that finally provides some context to the story of anti-Semitism and shows us that anti-Jewish feelings do not arise unprovoked out of thin air, jealousy or racism. It finally takes Jews down from the idolatrous pedestal and brings them down to earth with the rest of us.

Provides excellent information on codes, zoning and financing issues for those who wish to build earth sheltered homes. A little dry, but exactly as advertised.

This book is a must for anyone who is considering naural resource management as a career, as I am. It deals with the basic ecological terms and poses some very difficult problems that forest management will occure in the recent future. If you are interested in conservation, and not preservation, this book will be a wise investment.

The tension is palpable as Tess and Jerry Brennan wait for the police to arrive. Their family lives, friendships, even their marriage, are in freefall.

Jerry has been caught in a misdemeanour which will mean the end of a successful career, while Tess did not foresee the devastating consequences of her own actions, however innocently undertaken. To add to her distress, her two best friends are likewise shocked. Big, warm-hearted Rita, having enjoyed a seemingly unassailable relationship with her doting Ricky, is reeling, Maddy is struggling with alcohol in an attempt to cope with the behavior of her husband, a TV soap star.

Life had skated along for the three couples and their assorted offspring until last summer, when they all traveled to the heavenly village of Collioure in the south of France...

Unerringly perceptive, LAST SUMMER IN ARCADIA is a compellingly written, powerful exploration of the complex mix of love, trust and compromise called "marriage".

If you think of El Paso as a "frontier town," a border zone where "everything goes," or even a romantic region that functions for some thinkers as a paradigm or "alluring" allegory for the meeting and mixing of different cultures, you might be right. But you might also be in the grip of powerful interpretive mechanisms that conceal more of El Paso than they reveal.

El Paso: Local Frontiers at a Global Crossroads aims to provide a better "optic" for El Paso - and the border - than all the familiar metaphors, clichés, and traditional views that have passed for understanding of the enormously complex border phenomenon. Te crux of Ortiz's argument is that what is missing from the standard view(s) of El Paso is the central reality that the city suffers from an "overwhelming and pervasive subordination of local concerns to nonlocal interests." El Paso, as is true of other border cities, serves a mediating function for activities too often generated by forces that are beyond its control and which result from decisions made elsewhere.

"Overwhelmed by the region's linking role for transit and traffic, both legal and nonlegal," he says, "most of the interactions in the region are influenced by this intermediary function. The border's population is disproportionately affected by migration and trade flows. Its welfare and opportunities are overridden by national and international developments and measures. Immigration laws and currency devaluations, for example, have shattering local affects. In addition, much of the economic life of border cities depends on decisions made by companies elsewhere."

At the same time, he says, "the city's residents have little or no significant say in most of these policies, decisions, and migratory flows."

"In this subordination," Ortiz says, "most of the benefits accrued from the geographical position of the border have been taken away from the region's residents. In turn, residents contend with a skewed share of the costs of providing the services or resources for the intermediation" demanded by relationships in existence at any particular moment here. The term for that, in Ortiz's analysis, is "alienated instrumentality."

Ortiz describes the subordination as "overwhelming and pervasive." The impact ranges from wear and tear on the area's physical infrastructure to the costs of traffic bottlenecks at and on both sides of the international bridges, pollution and a variety of other serious dislocations that the community, often invisible to the decision makers and key players, has to suffer.

The book explores the efforts of five local attempts in the 1990s to assert a measure of control over the forces affecting El Paso:
1. An effort by La Mujer Obrera to upgrade the city's infrastructure for garment production;
2. A multi-million dollar business venture that involved investors from different countries;
3. A second business initiative designed to broaden the city's industrial base by developing mid-tech manufacturing;
4. The founding of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce against the opposition of what subsequently became the Greater El Paso Chamber of Commerce;
5. The multiethnic attempt of Unite El Paso to develop broad-based community leadership.

All of these efforts bore some fruit, but none of them succeeded in asserting control over El Paso's future or even in positioning itself to significantly influence the city's fate.

The strength of the book is Ortiz's effort to conceptualize the city in a nontraditional, nonstereotypical way, and in terms that don't "erase," "occlude," "hide," "elide," "blur," "trivialize" or "sidestep" the complex reality that is lived on the ground both in El Paso and other border cities. Ortiz offers critiques of such conceptions by writers Gloria Anzaldúa and Guillermo Gómez-Peña that see the border as a place of "hybridity and cross fertilization," and even by academics such as anthropologist Renato Rosaldo, who took up the notion and transformed it into "border crossings" to explain multiculturalism in the United States.

For such writers and thinkers, the border, never in full view itself, "becomes a lens for looking somewhere else." Ortiz's aim "is to offer an alternative view to the border to counter the reifying glow of the region as a site of mythic or stigmatic [stigmatizing] dimensions" inherent in the traditional metaphors and allegorical representations of the border.

"We need a new analytical prism for looking at the perplexing situation of the border and the overall spectral transformation of globalization in most other settings," he writes.

Central to Ortiz's vision of El Paso is the notion that the city is "a frontier [where] local concerns are persistently and pervasively subordinated to nonlocal interests" and that as a frontier, the area is always open to "takeovers" by powers located elsewhere. Examples are the domination of the border economy by the maquiladora industry that brought hundreds of Fortune 500 firms to industrial parks in Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana, as well international trade treaties (such as NAFTA) and customs and immigration policies enunciated by federal governments in Washington, D.C., and Mexico City.

The book contains numerous insights and provocative perspectives. One illustration is that while the border is often conceived as "empty space," it is attractive to multinational corporations for the abundance of cheap labor!

Ortiz suggests a different conceptual model that takes in more of the reality of the border: "Instead of a so-called paradigm, the border region suggests to me the image of a sphere situated on the dividing line between the United States and Mexico. The sphere is a play of mirrors. Internally, the concave surfaces of the sphere reflect each edge - each city - on the divide. Externally, the convex surfaces reflect each country. I believe that the image of a sphere allows us to recognize the simultaneously distorting and elucidating function of the border region in is frontier condition."

The concluding chapter elaborates on that notion. The analytical terminology is sometimes a bit difficult, but the effort at untangling it is worthwhile. There are a few typos, but they are easily corrected in the next edition. That should in no way constitute an excuse for missing this important book.

El autor hace una mirada objetiva respecto de el auge de la sociedad de la información y junto a ella una apreciacion etica de los problemas que conlleva la vigilancia del consumidor en el capitalismo posmoderno. Hace ademas un analisis Foucaultiano de los fenomenos de vigilancia y estudia la teoria de la vigilancia en Bentham, con su Panoptico.