Extension Books

I got this one in hardback from the public library before I bought this paperback version. I liked the hardback version, but I was disappointed with the paperback version and here's why:

It appears as if the pictures are copies of copies of copies taken out of the the original hardback and copied right on some copier rather than done correctly all over again, and there is at least one VERY GOOD picture M I S S I N G!!!!--one of my favorites--where Bob is reading a magazine or paper up close and he has his hat on. NOT DONE RIGHT IS ALSO A TOP FAVORITE: the one where Bob Dylan is playing chess at a French cafe--REALLY REALLY GOOD ONE, I love that one very much--but it still seems COPY OF COPY OF COPY quality--IT IS DARK AND GRITTY. The quality of the pictures in the original hardback book are FAR superior. and I SEE it. I did a copy of the one at the cafe on a copier before I returned the book to the library and believe me it is BETTER quality than the one in this paperback version!!! AAAAHHHHH!!! Maybe people won't notice, but I do notice it. Unfortunately I had to return the hardback book to the library.

P L E A S E TELL THE PUBLISHER TO R E D O THIS BOOK PROPERLY AND RESPECT Bob Dylan's fans because we want quality pictures. This book deserves to be done again properly. Paperback is okay to save the forests, but the quality of the pictures has something to do with the process and technology that they use. They just dished out a paperback version and copied the pictures from some other copies (as I see it) just to make money with no concern about the QUALITY OF THE PICTURES.

May I also suggest Dylan: Visions, Portraits & Back Pages as a book with FAR FAR FAR FAR SUPERIOR quality pictures and it even costs less!

Please do this PICTURE BOOK all over again, PUBLISHERS!!! These pictures deserve FIRST QUALITY production.

These photos will absolutely break your heart.
They will break your heart absolutely. If you love Dylan and the mythology he created around himself, this book will give you a glimpse behind the curtain. The images of Joan Baez and Dylan are so gorgeous you'll want to duck out of your busy life and cry for five crucial minutes. The image of a back-lit Bob and a shadowy Joan in profile is a just, simple ode to these monoliths. These photos give us what we've intimated about Bob all along.

many of these photos became icons over the years. not only absorbing photos of dylan, but classics of the photographic art. dylan was lucky during this period to be photographed by so many excellent photographers: kramer's work is the best

This seems to be a reprint of a book that first came out in the 60's. I still have my copy but it's a smaller format than this reprint. It is chock full of great photos of Dylan being whimsical and eccentric, posing in a studio setting. Very professional. All seem to be from the "Highway 61 Revisited" period (1965)when Dylan affected a "mod" style of clothes, including polka-dot shirts and Beatle boots. This is a treasure for any Dylan addict. Except for one essay, the book is all photos without text.

Rick Stein and his 'Taste of the Sea' series ran on PBS (or at least on KQED, SF) a few years back, and we miss his slightly off-center humor and antics -- but especially his on-location recipes, often prepared with the characters who provided them to him. In addition to fun memories of the series, these recipes will give you many delicious meals to savor. A good read, and a very good cook book.

I rate cookbooks not on how they look, or even on how difficult they are to follow, but on how good the recipes taste. In this category, Mr. Stein excells. The food is delicious. His recipe for Tom Yam Gung is one of the easiest and best tasting recipes for this classic Thai soup that I have ever tasted. The wonderful blend of fresh seafood and asian spice is unbeatable. Highly recommended.

Rick Stein is not only a superb chef but his writing is clear, simple and enthusiastic - like his food. He gives plenty of tips from what utensils to buy, to how to store fish and how to make excellant stocks. All the way through the book he carries you along with his passion and almost cooly, simplistic aproach. If you like fish - or even if you don't - I am sure you will find this book rewarding, not only for the food but also the interesting little tit bits he incorporates.

Ideal for anyone who wants to cook fish but is either worried about how difficult it might be - or bored with the same old same old.Rick's passion and enthisiasm is contageous.

If you are like me - love seafood, and always eat it in restaurants, but not sure about tackling it at home - this is ideal.

Its a good read even if you dont want to cook!

This book is remarkable. It is very apparent that Mr. Morrison did his research well. A must read for any history buff.

It is apparent that Mr. Morrison spent many long hours slaving over this book. It is well written, interesting, and a must have for civil war buffs. I only wish Mr. Morrison would write more books. It's heartwarming to see that Mr. Morrison credits his parents Al & Joan Morrison, and his siblings - Chris, Nancy, Jim, and Tony with the fortitude, intellegence and support to get this book completed. Keep up the good work, Mr. Morrison. I want to read more of your books in the future!

An incredibly well researched, well written account of the causes of the American Civil War! It's actually worth the high price!!!

In his introduction the author tells us "this book examines the relationship between the territorial issue in the origins of the American Civil War. This story is familiar; this telling has not.... The debate between Democrats and Whigs over Texas in 1844 were based on economics and divided the parties along national lines. By 1860, the struggle over westward expansion and settlement issued in sectional arguments and a fragmented political system. This transformation is the story here and told.[p. 4]"

The expansionists quickly realized that the problem with moving the boundaries of this country westward was going to be slavery. And not so much slavery itself, but demagoguery, used by radicals on both sides to inadvertantly hinder the progress of the westward movement. The author quotes the extreme expansionist Thomas B. Stevenson, "it is not, I fear, either the actual status of the actual settlement of the slavery question that the antagonistic agitators really wish to effect. It is the use they can make of it as it exists."[p.1] The acquisition of Texas and the subsequent territory obtained through the Mexican War became the hobbyhorse of the extremists during the 1840s. The 1850s opened a decade of extreme agitation on both sides of the question of opening territory or closing it forever to the peculiarinstitution. "Republicans [the North] used slavery to define broadly remaining and limits of freedom not only within the North's free labor economy but, more important, within the nation's republican political state."[p. 167] In the South the European class system was extolled by some of the most radical proslavery elements. A major portion of the expansionist program was the example to be set by a union of the nation reaching from sea to sea. It is because the South felt so strongly toward the Union that states rights activists were compelled to remind their southern cohorts, "the Federal Union is not a god -- it is a human institution. So long as it answers the hands of its creation, it should be and will be carefully preserved. When it fails those ends, it should be discarded."[p. 184]

In 1856 James Buchanan, the second worst president this country has endured, entered the fray. Stephen A. Douglas, the famous Chicago politician of the Lincoln Douglas debates, decried the sectionalism of the Republicans. He maintained that the founding fathers, recognizing the diversity of economics and social institutions of the several states, and established a union of the fundamental right that every state could do as he pleased without his neighbors interfering. The Compromise of 1850, the Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act all reaffirmed the right of the state to settle its own local problems and decide what is best for its free existence. The Democratic Party attempted as far as possible to allow this operation. And Douglas, one of the major proponents of expansionism, defeated his own goal by not recognizing the importance of the slavery issue to the westward movement. Most people wanted a union as extended as possible, but half of them, not especially for humanitarian purposes but rather economic conditions, were dead set against the expansion of slavery into these areas, these new territories to be carved for the Empire.

The author goes on to state, "because secession had transformed the sectional conflict over the territories into an ominous controversy over the preservation of the Union, Republicans refuse to sustain the latter by conceding their principles on the former. It is a view that, the issue of 1860 -- 61 was 'not union or disunion; but new guarantees to slavery or disunion.'"[p. 274] this comment pretty much sums up what the author has said In the whole book. His promise in the introduction to connect expansionism and slavery can probably be written off as poetic enthusiasm. He writes a very good book combining the two subjects but offers nothing really new. Readers who are already acquainted with this period in our history won't find anything very new. Someone new to the field will find an excellent introduction to the general subject of slavery and its effect on the westward movement. It fails to separate the political, economic, social aspects of this time in American history.

I give this book 4 stars because it is well-written, well researched, and the author faces the same problem that we all do in writing on a time has been so well covered by so many for so long. The fifth star is withheld at the fault of the publisher. The format of the book and the text make it very difficult to read this book without strain I hope when a reissue the book is our hope that they will continuously something will be done to correct this fault.

'Monsieur Proust' is based on tape recorded interviews with Marcel Proust's personal assistant/chambermaid Celeste Albaret, made in the 1970's, several decades after Marcel's death. The text has (probably) been altered from the spoken word, and is very clear, consistent and readable. Celeste tells in detail about the last ten years of Proust's life, which he mostly spent in his bed, curtains blocking the light and a layer of cork shutting out noises - writing on 'À la recherche du temps perdu'. Celeste had to attend to all of Prousts routines and whims: he usually woke up late in the afternoon, ate only a croissant and some coffee and sometimes went out in the middle of the night to attend parties, and Celeste had to stay awake and let Marcel in cause he didn't use a key. As time went by the relationship between Marcel and Celeste became closer, and he became more and more dependent on her.
'Monsieur Proust' is not only about Marcels charming eccentricities. It also gives a glimpse of Paris in the late 1910's, and some insight into Proust as a writer, the relationship between his writing and memory and the demise of the old society. And the debacle between Proust and Gallimard and Gide when 'Du côté de chez Swann' was first refused (something Proust made them regret).
Also, Celeste criticizes some of the established views of Proust given by other commentators, his homosexuality for instance. I don't know how trusted Celeste can be as a narrator, and what may be additions made by the publisher, but 'Monsieur Proust' is a very captivating read.

The pleasure of memoirs is that for all that they allow a circumscribed vision of things they tend to offer coherent narratives of the past, and let you know "what it was like." This famous memoir by Celeste Albaret, Proust's housekeeper for ten years while he was writing his masterpeice, gives us thus a better and more complete view of the writer during his most productive years than could be imagined otherwise. Albaret was not a writer herself--the memoir was composed by others who shaped her oral reminiscences--but this work is beautifully shaped, and flows wonderfully. Almost all the major questions anyone would have about Proust--how he wrote, what he was like, who the bases were for the characters in his novel, and what his relations with his family were like--are answered in due course, and though Albaret retains her biases (she refuses to give much credence to his affairs with his chauffeur and others, for example) she is still as honest as can be. It's clear that she considered knowing and working for Proust the great event of her life, and she feels bound to tell as much as what she saw as she can.

If you're a writer, you can't help but feel curious about the habits of other writers -- particularly the great ones, the writers you admire. How and when did they work? How did they accomplish their masterpieces? Of course, a cross-section of famous writers only demonstrates that there is no one way of working. Hemingway got up at dawn and wrote until lunch or so. Kafka had supper late in the evening and then began to write after ten or eleven o'clock, when everyone else was going to bed. Evidently day is as good as night, if you have talent and the will to write.

One of the more unusual schedules had to be that of Marcel Proust. Unlike Kafka, who wrote at night even though he had to get up in the morning to go to the insurance firm where he worked, Proust was a man of independent means and was thus able to maintain as irregular a schedule as he liked. Or rather, his schedule was highly regularized, it just wasn't exactly "normal." Typically, Proust woke up around four in the afternoon -- if he even really slept that much, which is an open question. Upon awakening, he would "smoke," which was his term for a fumigation process meant to relieve his asthma. Afterward he would drink one or sometimes two cups of cafe au lait prepared according to very stringent requirements. Sometimes he would eat a croissant, sometimes not. If he were staying home for the evening, as he often did in the years he was writing A la Recherche du temps perdu, he might begin work right after this "breakfast." If he was going out, he might not return until the middle of the night. Arriving home at, say, three in the morning, he might spend a few hours telling his chambermaid all about his evening -- and then, at perhaps six in the morning, after having been up all night, he would begin to write. What's more, he always wrote in bed. It really gives new meaning, when you consider this, to the famous opening line of his masterwork: "Longtemps je me suis couche de bonne heure." For a long time I went to bed early -- this was written by a man lying in bed after having been up all night.

The chambermaid who was Proust's nocturnal confidante during the last decade of his life -- precisely when he was writing his masterwork -- outlived him by more than sixty years. (Proust died in 1922, Ms. Albaret in 1984). For the bulk of those years, she maintained a strict silence about her former employer, honoring Proust's own sense of privacy. But finally, late in life, she felt the need to set the record straight and thus agreed to be interviewed for this "as told to" memoir. This is fortunate for fans of Proust, and for fans of literature in general, for her memoir is as intimate a portrait as you can find of any writer. It is the kind of view you produce of a person whom you love, respect, admire, but also serve in the most minute and detailed capacities. You can practically smell Proust's underwear in this book -- which is not to say that it's a lurid tell-all, because it isn't. Ms. Albaret seemed only too content to keep Proust's underwear perfectly clean.

Too clean, some critics have said. And it is true that Ms. Albaret flatly denies Proust's homosexuality. She admits he went to a certain male brothel, but only -- in her view -- to gather information for his book. Otherwise, if he had any trysts during her decade with him, she didn't see them, or didn't want to. But then again, so what? Do you really have to look for stains in the man's underwear? In comparison to all the vanguard writers who were absolute jerks, it comes as something of a relief to read of a writer who comes off as a sweet, generous, nostalgic, insightful man.

Not that Proust didn't have his eccentricities, because certainly he did: his nocturnal schedule, abstemious diet, the cork walls lining his bedroom to prevent noise, the curtains closed to keep out the sunlight. It can almost be harrowing to read of Ms. Albaret's indoctrination into Proust's neurotic universe, and yet at the same time you can recognize that this controlled climate was necessary to enable Proust to recreate the splendid universe of memories in his book. Ms. Albaret says it best herself:

"Now I realize M. Proust's whole object, his whole great sacrifice for his work, was to set himself outside time in order to rediscover it. When there is no more time, there is silence. He needed that silence in order to hear only the voices he wanted to hear, the voices that are in his books. I didn't think about that at the time. But now when I'm alone at night and can't sleep, I seem to see him as he surely must have been in his room after I had left him -- alone too, but in his own night, working at his notebooks when, outside, the sun had long been up."

And perhaps that is also the truest thing anyone can really say of a writer's schedule. Hemingway's dawn, Kafka's evening, Proust's night -- what they all have in common is their own internal rhythm, a private sequence of sun and moon. It was Proust's thesis that writing could recover time lost in reality, and yet the unspoken irony is that in reality you also lose time just in order to write.

We bought this board book for our 16 month old daughter at the art museum in Chicago because it was so colorful and cute. My daughter loves this book so much. She is almost 2 now and she can say many of the words and loves to say and mimic the things that cleo is doing on each page. We were so happy to find that more Cleo books exist at the library too! There isn't a night that goes by that we don't read this book before bed. It ends with Cleo going to sleep and is very good for reading before bedtime.

My son got this book as a Christmas present when he was 9 months old. The book was a great read then, and we still enjoy it now that he is almost 2. I think it has a lot more use left in it. The book has really nice pictures, and a nice rhyme. We are cat lovers here, so this book was an especially big hit.

I love looking at children's books now that I have had my first child. But as I have shopped, I've learned that many books marked Baby to Preschool are not always appropriate for a baby under 1 or even 2 (aside from being excellent for chewing) because the topic or text is too advanced. But sometimes, it's nice to find a book that conceptually works for the little ones. And this book is perfect. Very simple text about a little cat who wants to find a friend and a home. The story is not too cloying, and it's not silly. But it is humorous, cute, and sweet. The colorful artwork matches the sweet, rhyming text. Highly recommended.

Really enjoyed this. Surprised it hasn't done better

As an astrologer myself I found this an excellent book for telling one about the history of astrology and how it originated in India. There are an incredible number of different types of predicition written about here, and it all makes run of the mill Western astrology look mighty tame.

A very enjoyable read this. Holt interviews endless different kinds of experts in prediction, as well as asking about his own future. The Rajastani shadow reader is fascinating, as is the author's account of the Asta Mangela, a South Indian astrological ceremony to discover what is going wrong with a family or a temple. Highly recommended.

This is a delightful book for several reasons. First is the vigor and vitality of Haskins' mind as he talks directly to you, as he did to the audience during the three lectures given at Brown University in 1923 that comprise the book. How they must have enjoyed the show! Second is Haskins' breadth and depth of learning as he painlessly presents the history of the university. Third is the latent sense of relief and joy of post World War I [for the victors to be sure] that fueled the world's mine oyster attitude of the twenties. Until the crash.

Haskin's text, "The Rise of Universities," is fascinating for a number of reasons. First, the story is superbly told in this set of three lectures given in the very early 1920's at Brown University. Second, the insights Haskins inserts at various points of the discourse are worthy of great consideration, and we very easily feel we are listening to someone who is an expert in the subject, one who knows far more than he is telling at the given moment. Third and finally, we realize we are reading a "historical" book, not just because the subject concerns history, but because Haskin's own role in helping re-introduce the medieval world to a new generation of American scholars was history in the making. His more famous and acclaimed text, "The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century," was a critical component in doing just that, but here we see Haskins "where it all started," in the lecture room at Brown, and we close our eyes and imagine we are sitting in on these discourses exactly as they appeared nearly one hundred years ago.

The work comprises three lectures on the medieval university, the first focusing on the earliest universities in terms of their structure, organization, and even linkage to today's universities, the second on the medieval university professor, and the third on the medieval university student. The material is presented in an extremely accessible manner, and one need not be a medievalist or medieval historian to follow the content. Much of the content is simply fascinating to anyone who wonders where today's universities can trace their lineal heritage. We read about the attempt to "date" the start of the world's oldest universities (Paris, Bologna, Oxford, Cambridge, and others), the differences between "northern" and "southern" universities, the specialties of each of the institutions, and the motivations for creating both student and teacher guilds. We also read about issues that faced the medieval professor, including the management of the classroom and its' students, the awarding of degrees, and even a little about medieval instructional techniques. We learn, too, about student life during these years, including the ever-constant quest to find money to finance schooling, the in-town brawls, and the requirements for exiting the university with an official degree. A special "extra" is the inclusion of some of the poetry written by medieval students and preserved through the years.

This is not an in-depth look at the subject, nor was it ever intended to be. (For such a book, try out History of the University in Europe: Universities from 1945 to Present by Hilde de Ridder-Symoens, which, at four volumes, is not only highly detailed, but also current and exceptionally well written.) What it is, though, is an excellent introduction to the topic that still contains many good insights on the topic and is well developed and clearly presented. As such, this book likely has two main audiences: those who wish for an introduction on the topic, and also those who are medievalists and wish to become more acquainted with Charles Haskins himself, a key personage in the field. Highly recommended.

Not much has changed since the 13th century. In some ways students were freer in that they had more leeway to choose their professors. On the other hand, especially in Theology and Philosophy departments, the inquisition was a fear near at hand. Haskins seemed to argue that students' freedoms was somewhat equal in the end to now. Getting drunk and wasting time was as much a part of univeristy life (in some circles) then, as now, and the number one issue of students was money -- typically how they can get it from their parents. Most students and their parents expected some vocational, profit making, activity to be the end result of their studies. Some students were serious; some often got drunk, sang, or got in fights, or both; and some wrote poetry and played the guitar. Everyone was expected to speak Latin, despite what their native tongue might be. They learned Latin so they could read works by ancient Roman poets, like Ovid, who also sang praises to being in nature, good times with friends, and playing the guitar. There was also law to study, or various associated studies, which was profitable. Parents didn't encourage their children, very often, to study Theology as there wasn't much money as an end result of it for most. Many interesting details given in his effort.

Universities formed, essentially, as a student union to protect their rights against cheating local townspeople and professors. On occasion a whole union of students would leave a town, if they felt cheated, taking their business elsewhere. The Pope, about this time, I think, approved of union formations (which I feel was the death blow to communism in Europe, in the end, and will be in China as well; plus they keep America somewhat safe from being an out and out plutocracy). I don't know if students these days feel themselves part of a union though.

Haskins has a very down-to-earth point of view and argues, for whatever purpose, that the modern university owes its direct linage to the universities of the thirteenth century in Europe and he does this with effectiveness and enjoyable, but scholarly, descriptions.

Haskins has the distinction of being the father of Medieaval studies in America.

My whole class liked this story the best in a long time!!!...

Our first grade class loved THE TURTLE WHO NEEDED GLASSES and so did our teacher, Mrs. H--, who read it to us! We hope Terry will have even more adventures to read about.

It' a favorite in my 3rd class with alot of my friends who need glasses. I don't wear them myself but liked the story alot.

Kate Wilhelm's Welcome Chaos, originally published in 1983, is currently published only in audio version, ably narrated by Johanna Ward (who is also Kate Redding). This scientific thriller centers upon Lyle Taney, a 40-ish history prof who sets off to Oregon to do research on eagles. Before she leaves, she is visited by a sinister, demanding government official who wants her to obtain fingerprints from a suspect living near the cabin she is renting.

When Lyle meets the suspect in Oregon, she discovers Sol, a charming, learned older man, and his hunky young male assistant, Carmen. And steps off the edge of the world she has so long studied into a veritable doomsday scenario.

Wilhelm has done a masterful job at setting up her plot and filling the reader in, quite painlessly, with the complicated but necessary scientific background essential for understanding the terrible possibilities and repercussions that will follow the dissemination of Sol's work. She has populated the novel with vibrant, substantial characters and lovely descriptive images. In a genre prone to hyperbole, Wilhelm employs commendable restraint in passages in which fear, anger, and panic run high. Welcome Chaos is a thought provoking novel that prompts the reader to examine the way in which the world as we know it could become something else entirely in the blink of an eye. And there are no easy answers to the questions it proposes.

This book is long overdue for reissue, or at least an e-book release. It includes intrigues,romance, and speculation about mortality and immortality. The relationship between characters is well realized, and the description of the Oregon Coast is wonderful.

When I'm stranded on that desert island, this is one of the ten books I'd like to take with me. It is readable and re-readable. The imagery is haunting, the characters well-rounded.

Most of my recipe books I use for one or two recipes at most, but this book is an exception. I've cooked about 20-30 recipes from here and now there are 15 that I cook monthly, some even weekly. Although it's titled a low fat cookbook, you just don't notice that the food is healthy as it's all hearty and full of flavours. My favourites are italian bean stew, bacon broad bean potato supper, creamy pork with peppers, courgette and bean soup, falafel patties, mediterranean baked chicken and rice and chicken chow mien. The book is divided into chapters on snacks and starters; soups; grills; casseroles, braises and stews; roasts and bakes; quick hob suppers; pasta, rice and grains; salads; desserts and bakes; dressings sauces and stocks. I could easily throw away every other cook book I have and live only with this one.

This relatively unsung book is the kind of thing you need to help you loose weight. There are recipes for all seasons and occasions. Portions from for one person to dinner parties and even food for celebrations and festivals.
In winter I stuck with the soup menu and moved on to salads in summer, there are even recipes for what would ordinarily be very naughty puddings, even a Christmas cake recipe!
The book is also well produced, sturdy, with lovely photography and enough to prevent repitition and prevent menu boredom. It even has meat recipes which I was not expecting!