University of Minnesota Books

Very helpful for understanding the kidney and the children at the same time.

If you are parent of a chid with kidney disease, Read this book. Although some contents are already familiar with you, because you were told from your doctor, the suggestion of diet guideline and medication side-effects are helpful. Because therapies of the respective hospital are somewhat different, you have to know the side-effects of the medicines which your child take. Learning from this book, you can concern your doctor about your child's medications. But, I think the treatment methods of the future in this book are somewhat insufficient. Children will live longer than adult. So, I think supplement for this section will be needed.

When I bought this book, I really didn't know what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised as I made my way through it of the significant amount of work that was put into this book. While it was a bit wordy, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to someone who wasn't interested in the history of white antiracist activism, it's a good text for those who are interested in the history of white folks doing right in the US.

Becky Thompson has done a remarkable job researching and writing this book. Learning more about white Americans' involvement in the civil rights movement and their continued work today was enlightening and encouraging. The book sheds some light on why some people feel compelled to do antiracist work and answered some questions I have been asking about myself. Reading it helped me understand the era better, validated my beliefs and convictions, and provided me with some new ways of thinking about activism.

Gabriela Mistral, private and public. There's been much debate about the subject but Fiol-Matta takes it further and amplifies it. In the book, she touches on Mistral's possible Lesbianism or in a White-Race supremacy belief before turning into the defender of Native Americans and Mestizos. She also talks about the use of pictures and other visual elements to create Mistral's image. The book is not easy to read, but brings new aspects on Mistral's life to counterback her "Mythical" and "Sanctified" Image. And as the author says, it is an opportunity to re-read the author's work, one of Latin America's Finest.

A work of scholarship accessible to all. It reads like a novel. Queer Mother is fresh, creative and audacious in its analysis of Gabriela Mistral's historical importance. It removes the veil from Gabriela and gives her back to her Latin American public. This time she is real, human and possibly gay. I loved Ines Munoz's letters to Gabriela...juicy stuff!

Quiet Hours is a great book by a very nice guy. The images are calm, relaxing, and quiet - just as its title implies. The images show us a side of the city not often seen: a city without people or motion. The images make you feel like you are alone, walking though the night in a wintery place. You can almost hear your footsteps as your feet creak on the frozen snow, feel the cold air enter your nose as you breathe, and the snowflakes landing on your face. The Quiet Hours: City Photographs

I had never heard of Mike Melman until I saw I reference to this book in Kelly Povo's excellent 'Roadsides: Images of the American Landscape' and so I bought a copy and I'm pleased I did.

The title is correct, these are probably the quietest photos you'll ever see. Melman had the neat idea of capturing the pre-dawn hours of the Minnesota, Twin Cities. No people, no vehicles, and no activity that you expect to see and hear during daylight. Many of the photos are given an extra twist because they were taken in wintertime and the visual presence of snow creates an additional awareness of silence in the viewer.

Of the seventy photos twenty-nine are interiors and as such I don't think they quite have the impact of the exteriors but they still carry the theme of the book. Many of the outside ones work so well using the brightness of security lights (and don't forget the snow) of industry or sometimes just streetlights creating shapes of buildings yet still revealing plenty of detail.

The book is fortunately in the formal photobook style: landscape, one photo per page (in 175dpi on quality paper) generous margins with a location and date caption. Simple and elegant, it lets these quiet images capture your thoughts.


***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

This book, both well written and extremely thought provoking, is about an issue too often tacitly ignored in our country - the role of racial identity in adolescent development. Dr. Pinderhughes provides a vivid description of what life is like for "at risk" youth in different neighborhoods of the Big Apple. He attempts to address the underlying structural and cultural forces that reproduce ethnic tension across generations in different communities. In addition to providing thoughtful sociological analysis of youth violence, the book is wonderfully informative about the social fabric of New York. Anyone who is interested in better understanding what "race" truly means in America should read this book.

Pinderhughes uses his survey of teen-aged kids in New York City to describe and explain racial violence. His main theme suggests that the communities' attitudes shape the individuals' attitudes and beliefs. The most compelling evidence he uses are words straight from the youths' mouths. It is a well organized , easy to understand book.

Salt Lantern by William Towner Morgan is an in-debth study of a man and his relationship with the home he was born and raised in. The story he weaves includes his personal recollections, other family members' recollections, as well as a chronological history of the structures his ancestors lived in over the centuries.

Salt Lantern is also a personal history of the various branches of Morgan's families--in England, Ireland, early America, and into the Twentieth Century. It appears he was born after the sudden death of his father, he was raised in a household of women, and he grew up not really understanding his place in the family.

Morgan seems to become the Salt Lantern, an artifact that has signifigant meaning within the family, but is not really understood. Morgan explores his own birth, life, and relationships through the structures he studies and describes.

This is a study of history, architecture, family relationships, and personal memoir. A good read.

SALT LANTERN: TRACES OF AN AMERICAN FAMILY is a salty journey with author, Bill Morgan, as he traces his life and records his family history. Beginning with his great-grandmother's salt-filled chimney lantern, Morgan captures his ancestral family history through his study of family homes, landforms, letters, and family artifacts.

Morgan travels back through time by visiting ancestral homes in England, Ireland, Scotland; then he moves to Vermont, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and North Dakota searching for buildings and landscapes, letters and historical documents that help him tell his story.

Satl Lantern is also about Morgan himself. As a child gowing up in Pipestone, Minnesota, with a single mother, surrounded by older siblings and cousins, (his father died before he was born), Morgan uses the environment he grew up in to find his own sense of place and purpose within his immediate family and his ancestral family.

Morgan adds fresh memories written by his brothers and sister, as well as journals and other family documents to create a comprehensive American famiy history.

For anyone interested in family history, architecture, or just a good read, this book is a pearl. Photos throughout help to tell Morgan's story. Esspecially interesting is the story and photo of the Salt Lantern House that inspired Morgan to pursue this project. Morgan tells us he now has the family heirloom in his possession.

Beatrice Ojakangas proves again why she is the foremost expert on Scandinavian cooking. A great find and a good buy!

This book is filled with great recipes. One of our favorites is the spice rye bread recipe that takes rye bread and infuses it with essence of orange and molasses.

The book is not laid out traditionally with one section for beverages, one for appetizers, one for main dishes etc. That means if you are seeking inspiration for what dessert to bring to a gathering you need to have an idea of what you are looking for and consult the index.

If you are interested in learning more about the cooking in Scandinavia as part of their culture and celebrations this is a great resource. For each season there are several menus revolving around specific celebrations. Most of the menus include drinks, appetizers, main dishes, and dessert.

So far we have enjoyed every recipe we've made!

Inside this tome of ancient lore you will find a vast sampling of common mythological and folk belief from all across the region of Scandinavia and Iceland. The subject matter varies from superstitions, magical practices, supernatural beings, and regional and national legends.

The subject matter is vast, there is only brief discussion of the historical and cultural significance of the topics and tales within, but this book would become an entire encyclopedia of Nordic folklore, if that were the case. This is the type of book which will surely spark your interest for further research into the subject.

An observation on folklore, pertaining to contemporary pop-culture and religious perceptions:

Many readers will recall the idiotic fussing which certain types of "Christians" made over the "Harry Potter" books, in recent years.

This book features a few stories about Saemundr the Wise, an Icelandic Catholic priest, ...who was ALSO a WIZARD.
There is a large cycle of folklore about Saemundr, in which he utilizes his skills as priest and as a WIZARD, to decieve the devil. In fact, one of the primary stories of Saemundr, describes the circumstances of his training:

When Saemundr was studying in France to become a priest (probably at Troyes), the Black School appeared in that area. It was run by the devil, and the student learned Black Magic. The Black School was a stone and earth mound-like structure, which materialized at certain places and times in the mortal world.

Only a small number of students could enter. Once inside, the Black School disappeared, and the students were sealed up inside for a long period of time (a year, or several years). There was absolute darkness inside, the only light being the illuminated words on the pages of the books, which glowed like fire when read. A large hairy hand would frequently appear and provide food or books to the students.

At the end of the alloted time, the door (a hatch in the ceiling) would open and the students would rush out, as the devil would calim the last one out. Saemundr announced that he would be the last. The door opened, the students climbed the latter, and escaped. Saemundr had hung his coat on his shoulders, and rushed up the latter behind the others. The devil said "You are mine!" and grabbed the coat. Saemund slipped out, and dove through the door. The door slammed shut behind him.

Other variants of the tale, say that Saemundr did indeed stay, and learned even more Black Magic from the devil.

Now, Saemundr was a Medieval super-hero. Every tale about him describes how he used his intellect, religion, and MAGIC ...to defeat the devil. The tales most often involve Saemundr using his skills and status to rescue a member of his church.

Saemundr ...is a CHRISTIAN WIZARD!

These Saemundr tales date back to the time when the Viking Sagas were finally being written down in Iceland (early Middle Ages).

Yet, ...some silly old church-ladies will have you believe, that reading Harry Potter books will make you "in league with Lucifer"!

As a heathen and a student of history and mythology I find this book invaluable in terms of it's fairytales, accounts, and superstitions. Although this book has some clearly christian overtones, the pre-christian viking age flavors are still there. This is a great book for any student of magic, or for just anyone interested in the traditions, practices, and beleifs of Scandinavians. I highly recommend it.

-Ryan, California, USA

It is seductive to read Anne Michaels' collected poems as a companion piece to her breath-taking debut novel 'Fugitive Pieces', a fictionialised first-hand account of a young poet who learns how to articulate the horror of his family's past and find redemption though language and the love of a woman. The novel's protagonist writes poems about the persistence of memory, the burden of surviving the Holocaust, and the need for human connection, and a number of poems in this volume explore similar themes. As in 'Fugitive Pieces', Michaels also draws upon her impressive understanding of disparate disciplines including Antarctic exploration, music, geology and mathematics, to make her points. It is as if she has penned a small encyclopedia.

I know of no encyclopedia that can match Michael's liquid turn of phrase, however. Michaels' words fill one's mouth like cold plums: they have a crisp earthy simplicity yet gloriously ooze at the bite.

The underlying theme of many of the poems, as in 'Fugitive Pieces', is the struggle to accept the absurdity of the human condition: the manner in which we are nourished by love, and crave it, yet are inevitably crippled by it when a loved one dies. As Michaels writes in the poem 'Memorium': "The dead leave us starving with mouths full of love...We are orphaned, one by one".

The verse which comprise 'Poems' were originally published in three separate volumes over the space of 13 years, and Michaels has clearly developed her voice in this time. While the earlier poems of `The Weight of Oranges' are taught and linear, there is something less hurried about the latter poems of `Skin Divers'. One experiences the sublime sustained pause between the black marks on her page, which contributes depth to her lyric (to coin a musical metaphor which Michaels might well appreciate given her fascination with the piano and the secrets which its playing reveals). The difference between the earlier poems and the latter can be explained by the poet's confidence to dwell a little longer in the image, to explore its possibilities, and to play with cadence and sound.

Each of the poems share, however, Michaels' admirable ability to make the everyday remarkable. She writes of salt, stone and peat, and of mistaking the sea for the sky (in the poem 'Near Ashdod'), yet enables these objects to articulate the yearnings of the human heart. At other times, she finds words and images to articulate the extraordinary - the horrific and ethereal - in terms with which the reader can readily identify. Thus we come to know the psychological scars of a Holocaust survivor and the mind of a Nobel Prize winning physicist mourning her husband. Michaels brings alive events and people - poets, writers, painters, and mathematicians - who have long been dead and makes them breathe again. It is for this reason that I asked my History students to read 'Fugitive Pieces', and will have no hestitation in recommending that they delve into Anne Michaels' book of Poems.

Anne Michael's poetry strikes me at the heart to be very sensuous. She sees right through to the elemental depths of love. I particularly like the way she explores the many levels of our human condition. She is by no means a binary thinker, but a skilfull scientist of life. I don't recall the title, but there is one piece where she describes love as breathing not only through lungs but through gills...where love is so completely overwhelming that it blinds the senses to everything else. She literally takes my breath away...

Collections are difficult to review, especially one as wide-ranging as this. The thread that (supposedly) holds this collection together is that it is inspired by Yi-Fu Tuan, a "humanist geographer" (who, judging from his essay, and the many bouquets thrown his way in the other essays), is the very picture of a modernist major geographer.

What is a geographer these days you might ask? If you were to read this book, you would have to believe that everyone who has ever read any postmodern thinkers on the subject of boundaries and/or space is a geographer. That means just about everybody, of course, as postmodernists are all about space and, dare I say it, spatiality. How soon will place be converted into platiality?

Despite my snarky comments above, I like this book. Some of it postmodern ideas are only rearticulations of stuff hardcore guys like Derrida are known for, except here is is told from the perspective of geographers. I'm not sure what makes these folks geographers exactly -- in fact a couple of them are teachers of medieval literature -- but, I am sure that the majority of these essays are thoughtful and thought-provoking. Particulary fine is Wilbur Zelinsky's "The World and Its Identity Crisis" which sketches out a (very) shematic history of the world and our place in it. Here's a quote:

"We find ourselves caged in a curious world of contradictions, of unprecedented personal and group anxieties. The freedom to comparison-shop among lifestyles, to rotate among multiple identities, this culmination of millennia of human struggle and progress, such power and flexibility, all this has failed to generate the bliss one might have anticipated or hoped for. Instead an increasingly large segment of First World populations, and incipiently others as well, has begun to wonder who or what they are, or should be."

Here he is quoting Zygmunt Bauman:

"Postmodernity is the point at which modern untying (dis-embedding, dis-encumbering) of tied (embedded, situated) identities reaches its completion: it is now all too easy to choose identity, but no longer possible to hold it. At the moment of ultimate triumph, the liberation succeeds in annihilating its object...Freedom...has given the postmodern seekers of identity all the powers of Sisyphus."

So, this collection offers the general reader a chance to check out what's going on in the new world of humanist geography. Essentially it's re-thinking the ways the world, space and place have been thought about, and are thought about, which is what most post-modern stuff does. Good illustrations, mostly good writing which in some cases opens up new territory, and in others, treads over old, but still interesting, ground.

I would like to append my comment's to panopticonman's below (which I much appreciate). To contextualize myself, I am a graduate student in geography at UCLA. This quarter I am enrolled in a seminar which is reading this book, alongside Claudio Minca's volume "Postmodern Geography: Theory and Praxis." The seminar is run by Denis Cosgrove, a contributor to both volumes, and is attended by Karen Till (one of the editors of "Textures of Place") and Michael Curry, another contributor and former student of Yi-Fu Tuan. Furthermore, I have taken to identifying myself as a "humanistic geographer." Thus I have a particular insider's perspective on the work.

Some minor corrections of panopticonman's comments, to contextualize the work itself. First off, humanistic geography is nothing new. Prior to this book, the most definitive statements on humanistic geography were produced in the mid-1970s, in a series of papers by Nick Entrikin, Yi-Fu Tuan, Ed Relph and Anne Buttimer (all of whom contribute to this volume), and a book titled "Humanistic Geography: Prospects and Problems." What makes "Textures" so interesting is that it is the first book in nearly 25 years to actually have the phrase "humanistic geography" in the title. In our (post)modern times, the very idea of 'humanism' has become less than fashionable, with some avowed postmodernists (see the Minca volume or "Place and the Politics of Identity") actually taking an "antihumanist" stance. Most of the contributors to "Textures" have wrestled with postmodernism before, and many would perhaps take issue with being labeled "humanists," but all have benefited from the work of Tuan and other humanistic geographers. So what you see in this volume is not so much work on postmodernism particularly, but rather on the viability and value of humanistic modes of inquiry in our postmodern context.

Secondly, this book offers a very particular representation of academic geography. As panopticonman noted, what binds all the essays together is the presence (explicit or implicit) of Yi-Fu Tuan. (In fact, the book has its roots in a set of paper sessions held at a national meeting of the American Association of Geographers in Tuan's honor.) The three editors are all former students of Tuan (Till was his last formal student) and several of the contributors are former students. As well, quite a few of the contributors are colleagues of Tuan. The contributing geographers include several emeriti professors, several who have been active in the field since "humanistic geography" first emerged (and, indeed, helped to shape that perspective), and several who have begun their professorial careers in only the last 5 or 6 years. In other words, you have presented here close to 30 years or more of academic geography's history. This volume, then, is a good indicator not only of contemporary work in geography, but the historical trajectory which geography has taken. Furthermore, beyond the discipline of geography, you have represented the fields of English and American literature, art history, philosophy and anthropolgy, marking the influence of Tuan beyond his formal disciplinary boundaries.

Finally, I would just like to offer something moving (slowly but inexorably) towards panopticonman's question: what is a geographer, anyway? Certainly for many of the contributors to this volume (and including myself, though I am merely a reader of the book, and lack an authorial presence), Tuan does offer a model of the ideal geographer. His intellectual project begins with a simple supposition: that geography is the study (and, following Sack's analysis, the practice) of how humans transform the world into 'home.' Tuan has been concerned throughout his career to analyze how people have actively shaped their world -- nature, relations with other people, even 'raw' space itself -- in order to transform it into meaningful places. This project involves active (materialist), normative, and aesthetic dimensions; these various dimensions are explored, singly and in combination, by the contributors to "Textures." As well, Tuan has exerted a significant pedagogical influence on geography, exemplified in Entrikin's closing essay of the volume. Entrikin identifies Tuan as "the perfect humanistic geographer," focusing on Tuan's understanding of liberal education and humanism as a philosophical outlook on the world (as expressed most particularly in "The Good Life"). The purpose of humanistic inquiry, for Tuan, "is to develop the whole person, to create a good person, and in this way to cultivate humanity" (Entrikin here connects Tuan's project up conceptually with Martha Nussbaum). This volume, drawing on the force of Tuan's personality and perspective, contributes to the cultivation of humanity through its engagement with the material, moral, and educational directives and achievements of contemporary geography.