Open Books

The recipes I've tried have all turned out perfectly - they've obviously been tested - and the directions are easy to follow. My favorites were the crabcakes, the ginger scones and the four cheese macaroni. Project Open Hand is a terrific organization that provides daily, home-delivered meals, weekly groceries and nutrition counseling to more than 5,000 men, women and children with HIV/AIDS. I bought the book because it benefits Project Open Hand, but was pleased by the recipes.

You won't regret reading this fascinating discourse on ... something about cybercrime. My autographed copy is my most-prized possession.

This is by far the most comprehensive guide to consignment shop ownership I have ever seen. It is chock full of practical details (and issues) that I never would have considered - but are essential to running a successful shop.

If you are thinking about going into this business, this is an absolute must-read. It saved me from making a costly mistake that could have sabotaged my entire business plan.

One of the perennial problems in Christianity is how to bring about the unity we all say we want, but don't seem to practice very well. Even those practices that are supposed to be outward signs of greater unity, either of divine essence and presence or of community, tend toward division and, not uncommonly, rancor. The celebration of the Eucharist, the Lord's Supper, Communion (even the litany of names belies the difficulties here) is sometimes called the great symbol of Christian disunity, for so much energy is expended upon deciding who can celebrate and who can partake.

This book by Jeffrey VanderWilt, a professor of liturgy, sacraments and theology at Marymount University (Los Angeles), looks at the problems of Roman Catholics and non-Roman Catholics sharing communion. VanderWilt combines both story and theory, recounting real issues that have arisen, as well as hypotheticals, and uses these to demonstrate the points. He addresses some high profile cases - Bill Clinton (a Baptist) once received communion at a Roman Catholic mass while visiting Soweto, in South Africa; Tony Blair (an Anglican) used to regularly receive communion at the local parish that his family attended (Blair's wife is Roman Catholic). These were high-profile cases because of the personalities involved, but interestingly the issues arising where not due to the political rank, but go to deeper issues in eucharistic sharing, and serve to highlight the difficulties even a heavily-canon-codified institution such as the Roman Catholic church can have.

For example, Blair was told that he should stop receiving communion from the Roman Catholic church, as there were Anglican parishes nearby where he could received. He was told, in somewhat of an irony, that were he on holiday in Tuscany, where there were no Anglican parishes nearby, it would be acceptable for him to receive communion there. If this sounds inconsistent with regard to ontological reasoning about what takes place during communion, you might be on to something.

VanderWilt has four main sections. The first deals with basic definitions - what is Eucharistic sharing, what is ecumenism, etc. Again, because of the variation in practice and theology, there is no single definition operative here. The second section deals with risks involved in Eucharistic sharing - high on this list for VanderWilt is the appearance of a false sense of unity; VanderWilt in the end concludes that few of the risks are grave enough to warrant a lack of Eucharistic sharing.

The third and fourth sections - challenges and opportunities - are the heart of the book. The challenges such as call to pastoral care for each other and call for hospitality all ring true as credible and appropriate to gospel witness. The opportunities for increased unity, increased community, and increased recognition of God in our lives and the lives of others, for VanderWilt, far outweigh the difficulties that might be involved.

When Blair asked, in response to Cardinal Hume's letter telling him not take communion from their churches in England, `I wonder what Jesus would have made of it?', he wasn't merely echoing the WWJD sentiments - where does the church find the strength to say no to committed Christians who want to take communion?

Ultimately, VanderWilt leaves us with more questions than answers, but with much information to consider, and many ideas for further action (including ecclesial disobedience, a Eucharistic form of civil disobedience, perhaps?). There are key questions for continuing conversation, suggestions for further reading, and much to ponder.

This book really takes a very complex subject and makes sense out of it. The examples help make a real life case for why it is great to give out your content for free to the public and how you can commercialize the results. I have to say it has added something very special to our community.

"Handy...the real value of this book is the insight it offers into the industrial history of the United States" - Library Journal

"engaging...it's practicality and readability make it a sound investment...for all libraries" - Choice

"Purchase is recommended for travel, business, and general reference collections" - Booklist

This is one of those books that, the more you know about the subject coming in, the more you learn. I had read or at least recognized a large enough minority of the figures Sharpe describes so that all the new names didn't quite overwhelm me. (It would help if he wouldn't assume his readers know all the European languages, though -- how would he like having Japanese and Chinese thrown at him in important footnotes and even the text?)

In some ways, this is a very straight-forward history of comparative religion. Sharpe begins with a few ancients, a few missionaries, and Enlightenment precursors, then plunges into early theories about fetishes, totems, animism, and the "evolution of religions" schools of the late 19th Century. His discussion of The Golden Bough, of Fraser, and all the rest of that era, is excellent. I also appreciate his fair and judicious take on Andrew Lang and the "high god" phenomena -- which confuses a lot of moderns. [...]. He takes a chapter out to describe the early psychology of religions school, centered around James and a few other Americans.

In later chapters, Sharpe veers off to discuss Freud's zany horror-flick theory of the origins of religion, and (with deservedly more respect) Jung's interest in and influence on comparative religion. He talks a bit about structuralism, diffusion of cultures, and more about phenomenology. In each case, he tells the history of the movement -- and almost always offers reasonable and temperate evaluations. He has, perhaps, learned from John Farquhar, because in some ways his approach is very like Farquhar's in The Crown of Hinduism -- he finds something of value even in conflicting takes on religion.

Sharpe knew the subject deeply. I am sure I will find this book invaluable as I continue a research project I am conducting on the relationship between Chinese philosophy and Christianity.

I do have a few criticisms. Like many autobiographies, the book sort of dies towards the end, spreading out like a river into its delta. His description of the Tokyo conference is confusing -- who said what, exactly?

I disagree with Sharpe's view that the Bible uniformly views other religions as "the work of fallen angels or other evil spirits;" and am developing a response to that view.

I also missed a few names. Where was James Legge, the single greatest Western sinologist of all times? In general, Sharpe was weak on East Asia -- he plays to his strength usually, which was India. And where were Girard or Stark? Maybe they were just acquiring fame when Sharpe wrote this book -- discussion of their ideas would have been more interesting than the in-house politics that Sharpe ends with.

All in all, though, I strongly recommend this book. Sharpe is sympathetic, kind, and wise, and I'm sure this magisterial treatment will be of help to people in many different fields.

Why are Christians waging war against each other?
The complaint of peace: I belong to the most stupid cattle rather than to the humans.
Bitter is his comment on the Lord's Prayer.
It is a shame for humanity that this text is still burning topical.

More than a century after his death in 1897, Henry George remains one of the most original and influential economic thinkers in American history. His revolutionary theory on land taxation gained a tremendous following, reshaped the nation's political and economic debate, and continues to be widely discussed throughout the world. His writings shaped a generation of statesmen and intellectuals, including Winston Churchill, Robert La Follette, Clarence Darrow, George Bernard Shaw, and Milton Freedman.

Contemporary American Cinema is what it says it is: an overview of post-1960 American cinema that is so thorough and so clear that it will be useful to all film specialists and accessible to virtually all film students. This book is also authoritative, bringing together an all-star lineup of critics and scholars in one fairly compact volume. It was this lineup that convinced me, a reader with avid interest in film and media studies but not a teacher or student per se, to buy the book in the first place. What has made this purchase truly economical is not only the weight of information conveyed by the book but the efficiency with which the book conveys it. Contemporary American Cinema will remind you of what you know even as it tells you something fresh, smart, and disruptive in every new paragraph: and all without knee-breaking trips to the library.

Any review of this book must, then, include a review of its editors and contributors, many of whom are luminaries in film and media studies. (See the list below.) Given that most of these individuals are located in the United Kingdom rather than in the United States, it is worth asking whether it is wise to turn to so many non-American voices when studying American cinema. My short answer: good grief, yes! One of the best aspects of this book is that it provides the sociopolitical contexts that American textbooks often ignore or marginalize. As it happens, American cinema may be even more compelling viewed from the outside--if, that is, there is any true "outside" to American cinema, given that it is so often a global commodity from inception to consumption.

Another thing to notice about this group of contributors is its variety. Such diversity affords Contemporary American Cinema its truly outstanding coverage of the field. One of the book's unifying messages, if that is the right word, is the necessity of specialized integration. To understand what American cinema is all about, this book suggests, readers must confront it in as much breadth and depth as possible, while jettisoning value judgments regarding authenticity, aesthetic value, and the like. This is easier said than done, of course, but readers have a better shot of approaching an ideal of specialized integration if they own a book in which the contributors specialize in many forms and many approaches--and if said contributors are committed to summarizing the detail of what they know in the clearest, most communally oriented prose.

As a result, this survey dismantles preconceptions rooted in partial visions and in elitist valuations. Contemporary American cinema, it seems, is equally blockbuster spectacle and "underground" spectacle. It is equally the modernist narratives of "the Hollywood Renaissance" (e.g., Bonnie and Clyde) and the more traditional narratives of "family entertainment" (e.g., The Love Bug). It is simultaneously "blaxploitation," New Queer Cinema, and "smart cinema." It is an evolving array of documentary practices. It is, moreover, the low-budget horror of cult cinema (from Night of the Living Dead to Eraserhead), the mid-budget horror of neo-noir (from Looking for Mr. Goodbar to Body Heat), and the high-budget horror of the disaster movie (from The Poseidon Adventure to The Towering Inferno). It is changing uses of sex-and-gender codes. It is changing technologies and viewer routines. It is a highly unstable collection of rival definitions (of "auteurism," of "independent," of "Hollywood," and so on). It is, moreover, a blizzard of economic figures and an ever-fluctuating set of corporate nameplates. It is all these interlinked data and so many others. And it is all irreducible.

Some notes on the organization of this book. Contemporary American Cinema is divided into four overarching sections that are based on the four decades under examination, with some necessary "bleeding across" these artificial period boundaries. Each of these four sections is then divided into four-to-seven chapters as written by different experts. These chapters provide each writer the most space to delve into the films and filmmakers of each decade--and to explore the critical, cultural, and political contexts that enmesh these films, filmmakers, and decades. Each chapter is, in turn, "interrupted" by short capsule essays devoted to key genres or movements, key films, or key players. At the end of each period section is a set of helpful ancillary materials: box-office figures, award winners, suggestions for reading, and questions for discussion. And at the end of the book as a whole, the editors have included a glossary, a bibliography, a filmography, and an index. What is more, Contemporary American Cinema is amply illustrated with color plates and with black-and-white prints. I found the capsule essays particularly enjoyable. Because of their brevity, I expected these short essays to sacrifice content for ease-of-use. But I found no discernible drop-off in substance relative to the chapters. The capsules break up the chapters by focusing attention on single ideas, objects, or individuals--and they provide some of the book's most astute commentary.

Which parts did I find most useful? That's hard to say. Each of the seven chapters on the 1990s had clear strengths, with the pieces by Geoff King ("Spectacle and Narrative in the Contemporary Blockbuster"), Barbara Klinger ("Home Viewing, New Technologies and DVD"), Michael Hammond ("New Black Cinema"), Michele Aaron ("New Queer Cinema"), Yvonne Tasker ("Women in Contemporary US Action Cinema"), and Jeffrey Sconce ("Smart Cinema") proving indispensable. My only regret with these pieces is that I didn't read them years ago. This section also includes fine capsule essays by Hammond, Tasker, Linda Ruth Williams, and Mark Kermode, among others. In the earlier sections, I found the chapters by Michael O'Pray ("American Underground Cinema of the 1960s"), Steve Neale ("Revising the Hollywood Renaissance"), Eithne Quinn and Peter Krämer ("Blaxploitation"), Stephen Prince ("Hollywood in the Age of Reagan"), Jim Hillier ("US Independent Cinema since the 1980s"), Krämer ("Disney and Family Entertainment"), and Williams ("Women in Recent US Cinema") to be excellent. These sections also contain insightful capsule essays. Williams on auteurism and on Taxi Driver; Hammond on Richard Pryor; Kermode on Miramax and on Heaven's Gate; Helen Hanson on Psycho; Kim Newman on Roger Corman and on Night of the Living Dead; Christine Cornea on the Hollywood musical: the list is long and diverse.

In sum, the editors of this book are to be congratulated on their selection of contributor material and on their creation of a structure that keeps readers moving along a fairly broad span of years. If you are a teacher of contemporary American cinema, you should assign this book, pronto. But even if you are in my position--which is to say in no position, harshly cut off from the strange and beautiful world of desk copies--you should get this book in paperback. It compresses a wealth of important recent scholarship into one readerly whole and thus represents an incredible value.

Contemporary American Cinema. McGraw-Hill Education/Open University Press. 2006. Editors: Linda Ruth Williams and Michael Hammond. Contributors: Michele Aaron, Christine Cornea, Sheldon Hall, Michael Hammond, Helen Hanson, Jim Hillier, Susan Jeffords, Jonathan Kahana, Mark Kermode, Geoff King, Barbara Klinger, Peter Krämer, Steve Neale, Kim Newman, Michael O'Pray, Carl Plantinga, Stephen Prince, Eithne Quinn, James Russell, Jeffrey Sconce, Mark Shiel, Peter Stanfield, Yvonne Tasker, Linda Ruth Williams, Brian Winston, and Patricia Zimmerman.