ET Books

This is a fantastic story from one of the world's greatest supernatural writer's, and this acourding to Lovecraft! Reminesent of a good Edgar Allen Poe tale, it uses the ploy of double interpitation, the reader never really knows what, if any thing, has happened. It could be real or simply the feverish fantasy of the character's deranged mind. Steeped in mystery, it's primarily about a man, prematurely aged by his erotic obsesion for his young wife, trying to avoid his own death and get someone else to take his place. Naturaly (or un-naturaly) major spookiness ensues. This is a masterpiece of the bizarre, any fan of horror or decadent fiction won't be disapointed.

If your child's idea of enjoying the ocean is eating fish sticks, this book introduces oceanography with the help of Aquaman.

We recommend the DK Readers series. Our sons -- ages 5 and 4 -- really enjoy reading about superheroes, so we use that interest to introduce them to other topics (see my listmania list and other reviews).

Each of these books offers several graphics on each page. The information is arranged in brief chapters with lots of USA Today-style sidebars.

We also have the "I Can Read" books for young readers which we use for bedtime reading. The Level 4 books are more difficult and are better shared a few pages at a time. These make a great spring board for weekend science projects and activities.


We also own:

Green Lantern's Book of Great Inventions
The Flash's Book of Speed
Incredible Hulk Book of Strength
Batman's Guide to Crime & Detection

For those who read French, Chaix and Méniel's book Archèozoologie, Les animaux et l'archéologie is a wonderful reference work. For the student, the book covers each topic in the field by reviewing the issues confronted in each. It also introduces some of the methods for overcoming problems of limited material data and lists reference works for more detailed information regarding specific species. Included is a general history of the subject of archeological interpretation of animal remains from research sites, the identification of species, of domestication, of age at death, of gender, and of the taphonomy of osseous remains.

For those who actually work in the field, the book itself may seem a little too general, however it acts as a gateway to research data on specific animals, introduced in a catagorical manner that makes it easy to locate a desired book, journal or other paper.

For those interested in furthering their French language skills and who have an interest in the topics of archaeology, zoology, animal domestication, etc. this is a splendid way of doing so. Your knowledge of the field will provide you with a tool by which you can learn new vocabulary and your interest in the topic will keep you engaged in the project.

A seminal contribution to professional and academic library Architectural Studies reference collections, Architecture 05: The Guide To The Riba Awards is a compendium of collective studies from Merrell Publishers' most knowledgeable and studious architectural experts and researchers. Introducing readers to the Royal Institute of British Architects' presentation of the year 2005's award winning projects, Architecture 05 is comprised of thirteen chapters of informed and expertly presented content including: Teaspoons and Tower Blocks; The Stirling Prize 2005; Special Awards; The Architects' Journal First Building Award; The Crown Estate Conservation Award; The Manser Medal; The RIBA/Arts Council England Client Of The Year; The RIBA Inclusive Design Award; The RIBA Sustainability Award; The Stephen Lawrence Prize; The RIBA Awards; Maps, Lists and Sponsors; and an Index. Architecture 05 showcases the very best in this yearly celebration of British Architecture.

A handbook prepared by Foreign Area Studies of the American University, designed to be useful to military and other personnel who need a convenient compilation of basic facts about the social, economic, political, and military instutions and practices of various countries.

I read these works for a graduate seminar on Aristotle.

Soul- De Anima Latin for Greek word Psuche=Life. It is a Phenomenology of Life. Living things are Aristotle¡¦s primary interest. Renee Descartes says thinking is only aspect of soul, not life. For Descartes the soul is the mind. Aristotle classifies features of living things. A soul can¡¦t be a body, (like a corpse). Psuche=life is a living form of the body, the phenomenon of life. Capacity to live is what he means. Ergon=function or work, thus when he talks about soul it is a body¡¦s function. Thus, a corpse is a deactivated body. Dunamis=capacity, Energia= actuality, thus both words are active words and can be seen as ¡§activating capacity.¡¨ Like a builder while building a house, past potential but not actual until the house is complete.
Entelecheia=¡¨living things have their ends inside them.¡¨ A living being has an end in itself.

What is the soul? Psuche= soul is being working toward ends of a self-moving body having the capacity to live. This is another way of talking about desire (like an animal that is hungry). Desire-animals have this as we do. Orexis=desire. The phenomenology of desire is to be motivated towards something that is lacking at the time, hunger, etc. Pleasure and pain.
Desire and action there are 3 kinds of desire.

1. Appetite like hunger and sex.
2. Emotion-like love not on crude level as appetite.
3. Wish-desire of the mind, (I want a good job).

All three strive towards something that is lacking. ¡§Desire is movement of the soul.¡¨ Human life is a set of desires. Human desires are more complicated. Desires clash like dieting and appetite.

¡§All humans desire to know.¡¨ This is the first line of the Metaphysics. Knowledge examined in terms of distinction between matter and form, perception has to do with intelligible form. Perception takes in visible form of something without the matter. Like imagination, an animal and human can do this. All knowledge starts with perception thus memory. Ultimate knowledge is intelligible form from visible form but mind is also using abstractions, this is a human capacity only. Humans use language to do this. Animals have image of a cat, word ¡§cat¡¨ is an abstraction for us. True knowledge organizes language.

Seing<³being seen. Two beings, seer and seen, this is act of vision it is only one actuality and two potentialities. In effect, Aristotle is saying that the capacity to see can only be actualized by seeing something. However, he goes the other way as well; something seeable only actualizes its seeability by being seen. One actuality, two potentials, the potential to see, the potential to be seen. In the modern world since Descartes, it is spoken as two actualities, the mind, and the outside world and there is a split between the two, two actualities, the mind as a separate thing and the object as a separate thing being seen. This is the source of the classic problem of skepticism. When there is seeing obviously you have two beings, the seer and the seen, but the act of vision is one actuality. Aristotle does not have this skeptical problem because he seems to stipulate this idea of single actuality and the whole point of the capacity to know is meant to hook up with things known. The whole point of knowable things is to be known by knower¡¦s, that is what he means by one actuality, thus there is no split between the mind and the world. There is no purely inside and outside. It isn¡¦t that minds are in here and the world is out there, and we might wonder about how they hook up. The nature of things and the nature of the mind are meant to hook up. Thus, Aristotle is not a radical skeptic like Descartes or Hume. Act of seeing the desk is joint actuality of seer and seen.

Actual hearing and actual sounding occur at the same time. Berkeley¡¦s famous question¡K¡¨If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? For Berkeley, to be is to be perceived. Aristotle answers Berkeley¡¦s question that it does make a sound, but you have to have the capacity to hear, it is a joint venture. The mind and the world are not separated like for Descartes. Aristotle doesn¡¦t buy the idea that ¡§everything in my mind can be false¡¨ like the skeptics argue, Aristotle would say this is impossible. Getting things true and false are part of what the mind has to do, but the possibility that the whole mental realm could be put into question is impossible. Thus, he doesn¡¦t have to answer the question put to skeptics. ¡§If you are right that there is a radical doubt about the possibility of our knowledge hooking up with reality, why would the human situation ever come to pass in this way that it is possible that we could be totally wrong.¡¨ The skeptics answer we are not sure that we are wrong, they are saying we can¡¦t be sure that we are right. If that were the case then Aristotle can say, well is this a recipe for the human condition? One can be skeptical about this or that, but not about everything.

Aristotle moves from perception to thought. The thinking of the world and world to be thought is actualization. Nous=highest capacity of intellect for Aristotle. Mind is potential and until it thinks isn¡¦t actualization. The implication of this the world wants to be known according to Aristotle. The world also activates our desire. One actualization of two potentialities. Taking in form without matter that is what knowledge is. A knowing soul cannot be separation from the body. The mind has built in capacity to understand for Aristotle, no actual knowledge until intellect engages with objects. ¡§Actually thinking mind is the thing that it thinks. In this respect the soul is all existing things.¡¨ Soul is capacity to think the world in the passage.

I recommend Aristotle¡¦s works to anyone interested in obtaining a classical education, and those interested in philosophy. Aristotle is one of the most important philosophers and the standard that all others must be judged by.

I picked up this book used in an antique store for $5.00. From the first chapter, my husband had to give me a blow-by-blow "WOW--get THIS!" every night while reading it.
Apparently filled with unbelievable military chance errors and sheer coincidences that turned the tide of major battles, this book would be a facscinating read for anyone interested
in Civil War trivia, or just curious to see how many times the United States came within a hair's breadth of being permanently divided. Great read--I'm waiting my turn!

I read this book for a graduate seminar on the philosophy of art. John Dewey in his book "Art and Education," proves to be a modern day Aristotle. He questions the modern model of aesthetics. He situates art in the wider context; art is not a separate sphere of culture. Aristotle said art imitates or impersonates natural power of nature, thus, a technç which means something crafted by humans. Dewey says art is experience, not fundamentally different from other human experiences. Fine art is continuous of our past in culture and natural to human experiences. The capacity for technç is a natural capacity for humans. Imitation is natural. Art is embedded in natural capacity, not a special sphere. Dewey recognizes that the historical artworld model, is important and all part of the art phenomena.

Thus, Dewey refuses to isolate art as aesthetic appreciation or only as art. Art is not a separate sphere of experience. For example, the Parthenon is in situ in life of the Athenians, religion, and culture, and is not just an artistic work. Experience is shaping of a meaning. Greek works functioned as zones of reality for Dewey. Even for Plato or Aristotle did Mythos=myth never mean something false for the Greeks. To understand how myth operated in the Greek world is to understand their culture, it is not a fiction. Dewey says experience is an ordering of other experiences, sort of a plot or continuities.

Dewey's key philosophical issue is in his reaction against certain contemporary modern conceptions of art. When thinking about the Greeks Dewey calls the ancient experience a detour. Thus, in order to get over the prejudices of the modern conceptions of art we have to take what Dewey calls a "detour" to look at earlier modes, not to simply return to them, but to try to see them differently. Thus, Dewey's idea of "experience," which had a practical meaning and not just a theoretical or cognitive base, so he wants to use these ideas to reorient how we would be thinking about art and artworks. Again, a key target in this is subjectivity. The modern emphasis on subjectivity, that art is an experience of the subject. However, that idea screens out the responsiveness of the self to a world. As Martin Heidegger would put it ancient works are world disclosive, they are not simply subjective appreciations or experiences. Thus, what I like about Dewey is that he gets down to this very hardscrabble concrete reality on how art all ties in with the early "experiences," whether it is early cultures or early childhood.

Dewy makes an interesting point that art in modern times has become this refined precious tier, "art is put on a pedestal," out of its cultural context. Dewey is very astute when he says, "this is capitalism" that differentiates art and sets the standard. Thus, Dewey sees that the common people wind up turning to movies, jazz, and comics as art. Dewey observes that capitalism is the modern turn to subjectivity. Dewey looks for a common thread between practical arts and crafts and fine art. One he sees is technical mastery for both is essential. Art as an experience is an accomplishment. Not bothered by fundamental gap between art and craft. A craft work can have aesthetic features, therefore you can experience a pot as art, and it is useful as well. The question then becomes, "what is the difference? This interpretation is the model of multiple ways of seeing. Therefore, it is possible to simply shift within one object to do a shift between an artworks utility and its aesthetic qualities. Now whether or not the craftwork that has aesthetic qualities could rise to the level of a fine artwork that is another question. However, it certainly is the case that you can have one in the same object with both technical and utilitarian features, and artistic qualities. Dewey points out that this is the reason why we tend to value most of these found objects from ancient cultures, because they are interesting and not just because they are old. We do this in our homes, we don't just buy a table, we buy one that looks interesting.

Dewey defines experience. "Experience is the result, the sign, and the reward of that interaction of organism and environment, which when it is carried to the full, is a transformation of interaction into participation and communication." This is a very Aristotelian thought.

I recommend this work for anyone interested in philosophy, and philosophy of art.

John Biggers came to artistic maturity in an academic setting far from the art centers of New York. He was repulsed by the New York art scene that had so summarily dismissed black art when he had participated in a MOMA black student art exhibit. Perhaps his avoidance of the centers of art commerce were as responsible for the late acceptance of his genius as was the segregationist mindset in the United States during Biggers's early career. As well as producing important paintings, drawings, and sculpture, Biggers is one of this country's most important muralists, creating more than twenty major murals in fifty years. His life has been dramatic in both content and context. Wardlaw draws a clear portrait of African-American life in the black section of a sharply segregated Gastonia, North Carolina, where Biggers grew up in the 1930s, and the rich family and community life of rural black America of the time. The other essays, written by noted scholars, trace the history of Biggers's artistic career through a careful study and analysis of his body of work.

This book contains miscellaneous information about the Mythos collectible card game. It contains: the rules of the game, a FAQ, a short play and deck construction guide, a sort of designer's notes on the game, background information on selected cards, rules for solitaire play and creating your own adventures, a complete spoiler list for the limited edition of the game and lists of card attributes and requirements for completing adventures.

As a collector and player of the game, I found the designer's notes on the history of the game and the design philosophy to be especially interesting. Also useful to me are the short notes on the background of selected cards and the rules for creating and scoring your own adventures. The pictures of the selected cards are black & white with a paragraph of background info. Buyers should also note that there is an updated version of the rules of the game at the Chaosium website.