ET Books

Truly a book written with great care, thought, dignity, and creativity. Barb Wire is not a well known comic book, just the corny flick with Pamela Anderson as Barb, but she plys her part well. She even won the Worst New Actress award for it!WOW!!! Pam is going places, I can tell. First Baywatch, then the honeymoon tape, Home Improvement, and now this? Wow...what will she come up with next? A book? Maybe a disguised autobiography called "Star???"

Purchased for our cruise which had a port stop in Barcelona. Very informative. Definitely recommend for the first time visitor to Barcelona.

Chip Kidd's book of Batman collectibles covers toys, games, give-aways, figures, action figures and more from the 1960s through the 1990s. Very little text except for brief descriptions and dates of items, but great photos of all. This is a fun compilation of by someone who put a great deal of thought and effort to chronicle Batman's influence on toys and collectibles over the span of about 30 years. Anyone who collects Batman items will like this book.

I became interested in French history during the 1970s, a time when classic social history reigned supreme and historians such as John Merriman, Joan Scott, Robert Bezchuca, and Charles Tilly did, I think, their best work. Recently, however, French history (like so many other disciplines, has been taken over by "cultural" historians (who take the trivial and try to make it sound important by loading it down with jargon) and neo-conservatives who attempt to downplay or attack the importance of ordinary people in shaping their own lives through various means--even violence. How refreshing, therefore, to find a historian who still has as a social conscience and love of the common man. Guthrie's book is an excellent, extraordinarily well-written, and thoroughly researched study of how the ordinary people of the Narbonnais region of France, motivated primarily by an idea and not by economic hardship, attempted to shape their own destinies--often against the rich and powerful. The fact that they unfortunately failed in the end says much to us today--especially those who hold out hope that ordinary people, organized on the grassroots level, can still make the world a better place. The book should be required reading, not only for those who have lamented the demise of "histoire engagee," but also for anyone who retains their faith in the wisdom and determination of ordinary people. A Classic!!!!

A rare glimpse of life among the Navajo Indians of fifty two years ago as seen by a young government wife who is also an anthropologist.

It is a delightful account of the Navajos she met, the school children she taught, the medicine men and the traders she encountered. And of the events she and her husband, a government range ecologist and cowboy participated in. Rodeos, voter registrations, cattle brandings and Navajo ceremonies and rides up Canyon de Chelly on horseback or in a government jeep.

Often she and her husband were the only white people present at these ocassions.

The book also has a favoraable review by Tony Hillerman on the publisher's website...

Readable if somewhat outdated, this book contains comprehensive chapters on prosimian ecology, and a classic chapter on niche partitioning among five sympatric species of lorisoids in Gabon. A must-have background read for any student of modern primatology.

EXCELLENT ADVENTURE STORY that does not take long to complete. Makes you want to read the next part. Tells about the Pyrenees Maountain life and the honor that the mountaineers live by. Very beautiful DESCRIPTIONS-excellently suited for teachers of French to dictate to their advanced classes for practice and imitation.

Daniel Albright is an extraordinarily perceptive critical thinker. All of his studies are a delight to read, offering deep and thought-provoking insight into music, literature, and their intersections. His book on Berlioz's Romeo et Juliette and La Damnation de Faust, in two independant sections, is very well organized and allows the reader to understand a great deal about the works even if he or she is not intimately familiar with the texts or even with the music. He begins each section with a brief exegesis of the literary work (Shakespeare's or Goethe's), uses a few pages to explain Berlioz's exposure to the literature and possible inspirations for choosing to write semi-operas on the subjects, and then concludes with a hermeneutic approach to each semi-opera, relating it to other works in the composer's oevre and other various artistic entities.

The book is not difficult to read, but always use a dictionary when confronting Albright. He manages to find the most obscure but also the most perfect words for the context. I am consistently impressed by his vocabulary (highlights include "quaquaverse," "deliquescing," "conation," "palimpsest," and chiaroscuro!") His prose is beautifully constructed, and he manages the challenges of using a narrative structure to explain deep and broad subjects quite well.

Five stars!

It is a scrapbook. Berlin dreams included many things, art, architecture, theater, sport. In the 1950's the city's dividedness became an occasion for more riches of artistic expression.

Brecht died in 1956. His daughter took over his company--the Ensemble-- and the right to produce his plays. The Berlin of the 1920's became frozen in time. After reunification the question arose as to whether the Berlin Ensemble should be preserved.

Friedrich Ebert was the first President of the Weimar Republic. German inflation, 1919-1923, was more demoralizing than the defeat of armies. Berlin is surrounded by beautiful lakes and woods but most of the inhabitants stayed within the city's confines which produced a multitude of employment opportunities and leisure pursuits. There was also the issue of a lack of low cost housing which some of the architects and planners sought to overcome.

Berlin night life defied description. There was political cabaret. There were night clubs one does not talk about. Criminal gangs were camouflaged as social clubs. Franz Werfel, Stefan Zweig, Erich Maria Remarque, and Stefan George were active. Kathe Kollwitz and Georg Grosz were inevitably involved in showing the ugliness of life in the city. Other artists included Otto Dix, Ernst Barlach, Paul Klee, Max Beckmann, Otto Muller, Lyonel Feininger, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. The Bauhaus group influenced the avant garde.

The first public psychoanalytic institute was established in Berlin in 1921. The Berlin theater attracted the best talent. German film makers used Espressionism. Another genre of film was the mountain film. The music scene included Wilhelm Furtwangler, Arnold Schonberg, Paul Hindemith, Otto Klemperer, Erich Kleiber, Arthur Schnabel, and Kurt Weill. The Wandervogel movement was apolitical. Notes and index are provided.

This is one of the best book I've ever read!