MA

This is a cute little book to keep on the coffee table and flip through during commercials, or even to use as a reference when you've just brought home a new decorative item and don't know where to put it. Each page lists one "do" or "don't", and the pages are arranged alphabetically according to subject. For example, under "Hallways" you'll find suggestions on how to mitigate the negative effects of a long narrow hall. Unfortunately, some of the suggestions won't be helpful to anyone not planning to move or completely renovate their home.

Without some other knowledge of feng shui, these tips may be bewildering. Some call for arranging items that most western households don't have around, such as crystals and Chinese coins. Some are just confusing, like saying to place a bird in a southwest room facing north but only if it's green, otherwise put it in a north room facing south, unless it's a metal bird figure then it has to be in a west room on the east wall. I'm paraphrasing here, so for heaven's sake don't try this out.

A few of the tips are so simple and striking as to make the whole book worthwhile. The words on gardens are particularly lovely. If you're planning to rearrange your entire household though, you will need more help.

This book is very worthful, can get the healing powers through meditation

Mendes da Rocha is the most under-rated Architect of the 20th Century. Hopefully in the 21st Century comes a book worthly of his genius. This book comes with good photos but not enough analysis. In turn the book conveys little to the reader of Mendes da Rocha's depth of sympathy to the human condition which accompanies his great skill.

This book was of particular interest to me because of my love for the area around Lake Quinsigamond. I thoroughly entertained by facts about the history and the mental images I got from all of the recollections. The book is fairly well-written and the information contained within was equally well-researched. My only real problem with the book was the length which I felt should have been longer. The illustrations and images were interesting but I felt that more text would have made it better. The book did leave me wanting to know more about the people who built this area and what was the history of this area before the lake became a tourist haven.

I expected this book to be excellent, given its subject and authors, but I was disappointed with it. Like many books about Himalayan expeditions, Shishapangma focused on disagreements within the team. But whereas in other cases this has been amusing or affecting, here it seemed dreary, and unfortunately tinged with misogyny. The climbing itself is described in rather dull terms; one gets little sense of excitement or danger. Scott's informational/philosophical postscripts may actually be the best part of the book. Don't read this one unless you're studying the route or are a real completist.

The subtitle was supposed to read 'from war to peace,' but a recalcitrant Hafiz al-Asad spoiled the symmetry. This misplaced optimism in a Syrian willingness to end the conflict with Israel results from Ma'oz's dubious conclusion that, as far back as 1988, Asad made the strategic decision 'to reach a political solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict''political, that is, and not military. Unfortunately, the evidence that Ma'oz so scrupulously marshals does not support this thesis, rendering his coverage of events since 1988 somewhat hollow. (If Asad has in fact 'given priority' to a diplomatic rather than a military strategy, why has so little happened in eight years?)

With this exception, Ma'oz has written an excellent survey of Syrian-Israeli relations since 1948. He shows how the bilateral relationship of two states with a combined population of under twenty million, normally not of much interest to the outside world, in this case is of great interest indeed. He recounts how they went to war four times and skirmished on countless occasions, how for many years each side represented a great power alliance, how their confrontation now dominates the military dimension of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and how complex is the diplomacy between them. While conceding that the Palestinians are at the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict, he convincingly shows that the Syrians alone have 'manifested a consistent political and ideological hostility to the Jewish entity since the 1920s, and a military threat to Israel's security since 1938.'

Middle East Quarterly, June 1996

Not worth the paper it's printed on

The author's inside look at the events surrounding the declaration of a Buddhist spiritual leader is a riveting story. While some may have a personal bias against the account given here, it is a must read for anyone who professes to have an objective viewpoint on the situation. The highly-charged emotional responses of some other reviewers is evidence of the need for cold, clear logic related to the entanglements of Tibetan theocracy. If anyone ever questioned why the separation of church and state was a good idea, this book should answer all doubts.

Tomek Lehnert bravely stands shoulder to shoulder with the idealists of the world who demand the truth at all costs. It was never a doubt that this book would ruffle feathers. The Ostrich-like mind of many western spoon-fed spiritual seekers would rather see every Tibetan in a robe as a holy being, than to risk their own sense of security, and discover the truth. This book shows the greatest form of solidarity possible, and is only written for the noble-hearted few who would be brave enough to criticize even their own spiritual teachers. The book states that a Karmapa must prove himself by his own words, and actions. What could be more democratic than that? Thanks in part to Lehnert's work, Buddhism has been thrust out of medieval ages and put to the test by scientists, and not only desperate believers.

I really enjoyed the first book in this series and was anxious to read the second. What a let down.

Molly came off as nothing more than an annoying buttinsky who had no reason at all to be involved in this investigation. Why would she stick her neck out, and risk her family, for someone she hates? Why would she put her children in danger? Why would she keep pushing herself into the investigation when the police and her husband told her to back off? Why did the police allow her to keep interfering, even after they told her to back off? A grown woman can't think of a better way to get information than to attempt to pose as a teenager? If she went to the high school posing as a college student from across the country, why would it matter if she didn't speak the same lingo as the high school kids?

Aside from the fact that the murdered man's wife was her arch-enemy in school, she had no tie to the whole thing...so added to the fact that she and the wife still don't like each other, and the man's wife treats her like dirt, it was ridiculous that she'd get herself this deeply involved and put so much at risk. And the ways she went about it were completely ludicrous. I certainly hope the rest of this series is better because Ms. O'Kane is batting about .500 right now.

I am always ready to read a witty mystery and was anxious to dive into this one. I was disappointed at the forced humor of the greeting card variety. Perhaps I should have been warned by the career of erstwhile sleuth, Molly, who happens draw cartoons for, among other things, greeting cards. Even more annoying is the total implausibility of her putting up with the obnoxious wife of the murdered man. There are some reasonably humorous moments and I was not able to predict the story line. Others may find this book more enjoyable than I did. I just prefer my humor done in Janet Evanovich's style.

Sometimes I wonder what's left for ethnic studies scholars to write about. I mean, once you know early Chinese American men weren't allowed to bring their wives over and that Asian immigration substantially increased after 1965, what's next? Once African Americans have studied slave narratives and the Harlem Renaissance, what's left? Though Professor Ma analyzes issues that many other Asian-Americans scholars have already done (Chan did Fu Manchu comics, Zia did the Vincent Chin murder, Bow did Joy Luck Club), she provides a fresh theory by which to look at Asian-American matters. Basically saying that it's hard to escape Said, Ma suggests that Asian-Americans are trapped in reproducing Orientalism, even as they try to escape it. Admittedly, Ma applauds herself noting that she covers topics from the 1920s to the present in multiple genres. Still, she makes this great thesis that Orientalism and Asian-American identity have a four-staged "deathly embrace." At first, I planned to just read selected chapters, but Ma's introduction and thesis enticed me to read the entire book from page one.

Unfortunately, the rest of the book somewhat disappoints. First, not all of the chapters deal with Asian-American agency. This group had no part in the manufacture of Charlie Chan or Fu Manchu. How can Vincent Chin, a hate crime casualty, be blamed for Orientalist narratives? The penultimate chapter discusses Ishiguro, an Anglo-Japanese, not an Asian American. Further, while Ma exhausts ideas about Orientalism, she says little about Asian-American identity. I thought for sure she'd rely upon Wei's book on student activism or Espiritu on panethnicity, but it didn't happen. She leaves several stones unturned. For instance, while she discusses African-American viewers' pleasure with Bruce Lee, when discussing the video game Mortal Kombat, she never mentions that many African-American players prefered to be the black character Jax (short for Jackson? specifically Jesse Jackson?). The book even ends with a defensive two-paged epilogue where Ma basically says, "I knew you weren't going to like this book?!"

Two things are abundantly clear here: Ma's generational status and her age. Ma knows Chinese fluently and immigrated here after years of living in China. African Americans and Afro-Brazilians often fantasize about Africa as just a place to dance and beat drums. Most Irish Americans can only imagine what Ireland was like before the famine in the 1840s. That's what ethnics in America do: have dreams about their homeland. Yet here, Ma consistently attacks Asian Americans whose multilingual skills and travel experiences are not as extensive as her own. At times, this book feels more like comparative literature than ethnic studies.

Like bell hooks' rants against Spike Lee, Ma has an axe to grind with Amy Tan. This attack has the trait I described above. It somewhat reminds me of Africanists who derided Eddie Murphy's portrayal of African royalty in "Coming to America." Again, this is due to Ma's 1.5 generational status. Though I haven't read Tan's children's story "Sagwa," I watch its cartoon everyday. Just as Black parents have embraced "The Lion King" and Latinos have embraced "Road to El Dorado," if I were an Asian-American parent, I would want my child to watch "Sagwa." Far from maligning China, the show consistently presents the country as full of tales and history and wonders.

Ma admits that she saw no problems with "Swiss Family Robinson" as a child outside of the US, yet she attacks Asian-American actors and viewers for embracing "Mulan." What kind of age bias is that?

Ma mentions biraciality often (Fu Manchu's daughter, Tan's characters, she even says Bruce Lee was 1/4 British). Still, she neither stands against miscegenation nor celebrates diversity here. Maybe it's because I'm also reading "Sum of Our Parts," but it struck me that Eurasians are just here, with nothing more said.

This was a slim text but it spoke profoundly. This was interesting, though confusing, cultural studies. This was quite a risky and ambitious text, but I'm not blown over by the result.

An all-star cast of sixteen academics, all but one either Palestinian or Israeli, attended a 1994 conference at Hebrew University; The PLO and Israel memorializes their deliberations. The book bears close attention because, with only some exceptions (fine chapters by Hillel Frisch, Galia Golan, Meir Litvak, Shaul Mishal, Barry Rubin), one of Israel's leading institutions has issued a document that for all intents and purposes serves as Palestinian propaganda. In this it represents the thinking of Israel's elite.

The apologetics begin in the subtitle, where the main question roiling Israel public life (are negotiations with the Palestinians leading to peace or not?) is flat-out assumed (of course it is). They continue in the introduction by Sela, where he deems the post-1967 PLO 'an authentic Palestinian national organization,' refers to 'intransigent Israeli hostility' to the PLO (but not PLO hostility to Israel), and adopts such PLO terminology as the 'Palestinian revolution.' From here the drumbeat goes on. Muhammad Muslih learnedly details the PLO's 'numerous peace initiatives' between 1974 and 1988. Manuel Hassassian's chapter on PLO changes in the thirty years to 1994 is subtitled 'a democracy in the making.' The editors assure us that the PLO now 'adheres to the norms of international legitimacy.' Eyad El Sarraj describes the 'sort of ecstasy' induced by the intifada. And Baruch Kimmerling finds in the election of Binyamin Netanyahu proof that the Israeli Jews were not 'ripe' for 'a reasonable settlement' with the Palestinians.

Middle East Quarterly, June 1998