european

The problem with "The Birds" ("Ornithes") is that for once Aristophanes does not seem to be attacking some specific abuse in Athens. Still, we suspect that even this little fantasy is not simply escapist entertainment. Certainly there are those who see it as a political satire about the imperialistic dreams that resulted in the disastrous invasion of Sicily (which happened the year before his play was produced in 414 B.C.). Then again, this could just be Aristophanes bemoaning the decline of Athens.

Pisthetaerus ("Trusting") and Euelpides ("Hopeful") have grown tired of life in Athens and decide to build a utopia in the sky with the help of the birds, which they will name Necphelococcygia (which translates roughly as "Cloud Cuckoo Land"). Pisthetaerus and his feathered friends have to fight off those unworthy humans, malefactors and public nuisances all, who try and join their utopia. Then there are the gods, who come to make some sort of agreement with the new city because they have created a bottleneck for sacrifices coming from earth.

Because it is a more general satire, "The Birds" tends to work better with younger audiences than most comedies by Aristophanes. Besides, the chorus of birds lends itself to fantastic costumes, which is always a plus with young theater goers. In studying any of the Greek plays that remain it is important to I have always maintained that in studying Greek plays you want to know the dramatic conventions of these plays like the distinction between episodes and stasimons (scenes and songs), the "agon" (a formal debate on the crucial issue of the play), and the "parabasis" (in which the Chorus partially abandons its dramatic role and addresses the audience directly). Understanding these really enhances your enjoyment of the play.

Or rather, you can give an Athenian wings but he won't become a gentle agrarian bird rather, he'll rouse the citizenship, attack the Gods, and turn on you at the last possible moment. While some literary critics tout this as Aristophanes' most unfathomable work, well, I just think they're being silly. Maybe that's my own lack of education speaking, but I think The Birds a pretty obvious, as well as bitingly funny, commentary on humans, or men, or Athenians (all of these concepts probably being more or less the same to Aristophanes)as hopelessly political and power-hungry beings. One thing I love about this, and, I suppose, all of the Greek dramas, is that they are ultimately very malleable and applicable to my (our?) modern experience. (With a certain ammount of difficulty) you can lead a 21st Century North American to social conciousness but they're still gonna want and have the economic buying power to get, cheap Nikes. Cynical? Yes. Scathing? Yes. Real? You betcha. Sure we've got indoor plumbing, but our cultural context is back in the golden age. Lucky we've still got dudes like Aristophanes to give us a clue as to how to slog through it all.

Medicine, whether conventional, homeopathic, or herbal, as it is practiced in America follows mainly a cause-and-effect approach. It seeks THE REMEDY that will cure the disease. Instead, Botanical Medicine teaches us wisely that disease is the result of a complex set of factors: metabolic terrain, lifestyle, social and physical environment, and psychological structure. The treatment of major diseases or minor disorders requires a combination of remedies, but each set should be individualized according to the person's constitution. My survival (I am now 72) is based on my studies of homeopathic and herbal medicine since I was in my 20s. This book was the latest and the most efficient contribution to this survival process. I expect that Requena and Kenner will soon update it to introduce herbs whose healing powers have been recently found in the advanced industrialized countries, although they were known since long to indigenous people in different parts of the world.

This wonderful book takes us into the world of European aromatherapy, or phytotherapy, as it relates to all the systems of the body. I especially like the unexpected blending of Chinese and European traditions of healing and how the essential oils play a crucial role in health. This is a great book for the more serious practitioners of aromatherapy as it is full of chemistry and medical terms. Laypeople will enjoy the in-depth descriptions of the herbs.

These stickers are small, pretty reproductions of various pieces of artwork. Each sticker is unique in the book, no doubles of any picture. They aren't the most perfect color plates ever, but they're basically for correspondance and craft purposes, or could be used as a reference (say, by Art History students). While I wish there had been duplicates, I can't fault Dover for erring on the side of variety, and I can't argue with the wonderful value the price represents. This little book is great as stationery, but it would also make a nice stocking-stuffer or gift topper. If Botticelli isn't your favorite artist, Dover has made books of other artists' work, which Amazon also offers and which are just as nifty.

BOTTICELLI's art tells what he liked in other artists: the shaded color and light of Andrea del Verrocchio, the energy of Antonio del Pollaiolo, and the faces of Fra Filippo Lippi. From Bruno Santi's book, it becomes clear what he liked in his own work: atmosphere, in the coarse tent with the headless Assyrian King Holofernes and in the dawn alive with Judith and her lady-in-waiting; attention to detail, in the blue enamel armor and metal highlights of his Fortitude; color, in the dawn flesh tones under the cornflower- and daisy-decorated clothing on his Birth of Venus; innovation, in the clear path to the larger-than-life 16th-century art with his Calumny, in the first early Renaissance freely placed figures with his Primavera and in the first Italian inscription in a painting with his Madonna enthroned with saints; meditation, in the golden dusk of his Adoration of the Magi; tension, in the contorted acolytes at his Communion of St. Jerome. The author also shows in his Scala/Riverside published work what the Florentine art world was doing during David Landau and Peter Parshall's THE RENAISSANCE PRINT 1470-1500. Likewise, his beautifully illustrated text is a good way to understand Jill Dunkerton's DURER TO VERONESE, Sylvia Ferino-Pagden and Maria Kusche's SOFONISBA ANGUISSOLA, Mary D. Garrard's ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI, Andreas Prater and Hermann Bauer's PAINTING OF THE BAROQUE, and Rudolf Wittkower's ART AND ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY 1600-1750.

This book deserves to be on the curriculum of every school in the Western World for it delineates in merciless detail just what was the price of the freedoms we take so much for granted today and what the much-devalued word "hero" actually means. One hopes that similar sacrifices will never be required again by the ordinary citizens of free nations, but if they are, the courage, self-sacrifice and indomitability of Yeo-Thomas and so many others whose lives, and often also deaths, are touched on here will serve as an example and as an inspiration. Mr.Seaman tells the story of a man, ordinary in many ways, who, when confronted with absolute evil, and at an age when serving in a less active role would have evoked no disgrace, never hesitated to accept missions of the utmost danger. He proved the ideal combination of organiser, diplomat and man of action before capture and in detention proved an inspiring leader for his companions in misery. He was under no illusions as to the consequences of arrest by a barbarous enemy and when the worst happened he endured unspeakable suffering under interrogation, torture and slave-labour in concentration camps. Throughout all this his dedication to victory never failed and even in the squalid hell of Buchenwald he continued to resist. The most moving moment detailed in the book is when Yeo-Thomas, a filthy scarecrow in striped concentration-camp uniform, is recognised in a regular POW camp to which he has been sent on menial errands, and a group of British NCOs and men stand to attention before him, honouring him for a few moments before he returns to the abyss. Though Yeo-Thomas was assiduous in supporting prosecution of his tormentors after the war, his fairmindedness was such that he was willing to rise to the defence of Otto Skorzeny, whom he considered an honourable foe. This book is not only inspiring in itself, but it provides much more detail than the earlier "The White Rabbit" on Yeo Thomas's earlier life, and on the organisation of the French Resistance. Those who enjoy it will be equally impressed, and touched, by Rita Kramer's "Flames in the Field", which tells the stories of four women agents who did not survive wartime missions in France. My own daughters have been inspired by both books and they would make ideal and inspirational birthday gifts for young persons.

I have read this book, and its predecessor The White Rabbit. Tommy Yeo-Thomas BUILT the French Resistance, the Maquis. It was he who persuaded Churchill to arm them; it was he who went into Occupied Paris in support of his Free French friends under de Gaulle. It was he who was captured, tortured, and sent to Buchenwald KZ where fellow officers such as Desmond Hubble from Block 17 were hanged/strangulated and immediately cremated. He, with few others, swapped places in a typhus experiment in the camp; and as a 'corpse' escaped emaciated from Buchenwald. He testified at Nuemberg, and had been on his own mission to hunt down and execute KZ guards from Buchenwald in 1945.

Returning postwar to hunt down camp guards for liquidation. A true War Hero, but his suffering and the loss of those around him - Captain Desmond Hubble, Pierre Brosselette, Violette Szabo - make one realise the price. As a teenager fighting the Russians with Pilsudski in Poland he was sentenced to death; escaped from Zhitomir. as a man he ran Molyneux couturier of Paris; in 1939 he joined #.308 Krakowski Squadron of the Polish Air Force in England; then to SOE and life as an agent in Occupied Paris - sitting on a train with Klaus Barbie, Butcher of Lyon.

A remarkable man, an amazing story, he escaped the Concentration Camp but died in 1964 of its after-effects. A book to be read as much as a testament to human endurance, as to think of a truly remarkable man enduring great travails for his friends and comrades.

My favorite novel is _The Stranger_ by Albert Camus. _The Bread of Those Early Years_ reminds me of some of the brilliance of _The Stranger_. This novel is absurdist and existential. Walter Fendrich, the narrator, states: "I did not pull the covers over my head... for whether I amounted to anything or not, it was all the same to me. I didn't care," (p. 13). Yet Fendrich cares. Boll navigates through a day in Fendrich's life, a day wrought with obsession, greed, cynicism, and irresponsibility. Fendrich's words present this day in a manner often akin to the nihilistic philosopher Freidrich (Nietzsche). The real genius of this text shines through Boll's dense, dark, and, at times, brilliant prose. Two snippets of Boll's brilliant prose follows.

"This is what it must be like, I thought, to be drowning: gray water runs into you, a lot of water; you see nothing more, hear nothing more, only a muffled roar, and the gray, stale tasting water seems sweet to you," (p. 52).

"And I thought again of the woman on Kurbel Street who had wept into the phone as only women weep who can't cope with machines, and all at once I knew there was no further point in avoiding Ulla in my thoughts, so I thought about her: I did it the way you suddenly decide to turn the light on in a room where someone has died: in the half-light, it was possible to believe he was asleep, possible to persuade yourself that you could still hear him breathe, see him move; but now the light falls harshly on the scene, and you can see that preparations for the funeral have already been made: the candelabra are in place, the potted palms -- and somewhere to the left below the dead person's feet there is a hump where the black cloth bulges incongrously: that's where the undertaker has placed the hammer in readiness to nail down the coffin lid tomorrow, and you can already hear what won't be heard till tomorrow: that finals, naked hammering that has no tune," (p. 60-61).

This text is ripe for considerable literary study. Here are some topics I have analyzed through close reading of this text: names, shadows, light, bread, theft, obsession, darkrooms, machines, dust, death, colors (yellow, gray, white, scarlet, red, golden, blue, black, green), and symbolic interactionism (especially with yourself).

Hunger is not an experience the modern West has much experience of. In this short and very intense novella, written in 1955, Heinrich Boll describes the desperate circumstances of post-war German society in appalling detail: the father who sells his prized first editions to send money to his son to buy bread; the widowed husband who arrives in hospital to retrieve his wife's belongings only to go berserk when he can't find a tin of corned beef he is convinced she couldn't have eaten. In a final, mean act, she has.
Walter, the narrator, is a young apprentice in a ruined German city, most likely Boll's home city of Cologne. With the fierce moral gaze typical of Boll, Walter judges everyone he comes into contact with in terms of their willingness to give up some of their bread, a universally prized commodity in a country on the edge of starvation. Meanness is the norm, especially among those who are already beginning to thrive, such as Walter's employer, Wickweber.
Into this life of increasing opportunities and base motivations comes Hedwig, a girl from Walter's home town who has travelled to the city to train as a teacher. Walter's father has asked him to meet her at the station and find her a room. She is nothing like his childhood memory of her. In prose which powerfully conveys his sense of being thunderstruck, Walter describes falling suddenly in love as something fateful and terrifying, which makes him see clearly the counterfeit life he would otherwise have gone on leading. Like bread, love is the mark of a person's humanity, and for Boll, those few who are willing to give it are at least still redeemable.
In a mere 80 pages, a portrait of extraordinary detail is drawn of a desperate society already giving way to a complacency that will become perhaps the overriding civic emotion in the contemporary West. As a love story, this novella's lack of sentimentality, its emotional urgency, suggests that, for all the verbiage that is printed about modern relationships, our public discourse is able to shed about as much light on love as it can on hunger.

Of all the stories my father read to me as a child, this was my favorite. Its endearing story of self-discovery is timeless, and not to mention quite humorous for a six year old boy. It reminds me of a time far less complicated and will thus always hold a special place of affection for me. This was the Catcher in the Rye of my Elementary years. I would highly recommend this to anyone with children looking for quite simply a flat out good story to read them that they will enjoy.

The Breman Town Musicians is a simple story that involves setting goals and team work. It has two things that children love, music and animals. What a combination!

As a 17 year childcare veteran, I highly recommmend this book. Kids today can use all the inspiration they can get. A great way to learn is to read. I read this book to my daughter when she was a child. Now I am getting a new copy for my grand daughter.

310 Blesionwest 5-8 Ouhatachou Nishinomiyashi Hyougoken 662-0836

310 Bulesionwest 5-8 Ouhatachou Nishinomiyashi Hyougoken 662-0836

This is one of the best art books I have ever purchased. The layout and reproductions are beautiful: high quality paper, etc. The text, particularly a lengthy article about the Bruges artistic culture of the time, is very informative. Can't go wrong with this one.

Even if the subject of the book is not your current interest, it might well become one after you see this absolutely gorgeous book for yourself, the quality of the plates is the best.

More than Just a Detective Thriller: Although its category may Detective thrillers, and that is what it is and definitely what I thought it was when I bought it, it just goes beyond the mere murder (suicide), police novel. It tells the story of a high class woman that is married to a very wealthy fellow, but that is unhappy, for whatever reason and starts seeing for whatever reason a writer that happens to become her lover, and is till the end the first suspicious person around. This novel is so amazingly good, that, while you turn chapter to chapter, you start living different lives, different people, and very different scenarios. Not boring at all. And let me tell you, its magnificent narration makes one understand that "Life is solely the fight between the pleasures of life, and facts of suffering". The author tries to tell us that we are all searching for pleasure, all the time and everywhere. However, even the most pleasurable things we can achieve, at the end we may de confronted by suffering that can beat any present or future joy that any of us expects. All of these incorporated into a very good detective scheme and with very, but very surprising end. Excellent.

I have read this book twice. I love Fonsecas' style, and I have (almost) all his books. I would not like to type a long comment because it is not necessary. Fonseca does not need to be introduced, you just have to read him and you will be pleased.

Cris Shore has written a quite outstanding book on the European Union, showing how its leaders aim to create a single European state.

The EU's founders warned us that they sought to destroy the sovereignty and independence of its member states. Jean Monnet wrote, "Everyday realities will make it possible to form the political union which is the goal of our Community and to establish the United States of Europe." Konrad Adenauer said that the original proposal for pooling French and German steel production was "first and foremost political, not economic. This plan was to be the beginning of a federal structure of Europe."

Later, Chancellor Kohl said, "In Maastricht we laid the foundation stone for the completion of the European Union. The European Union Treaty introduces a new and decisive stage in the process of European Union which within a few years will lead to the creation of what the founding fathers of modern Europe dreamed after the last war: the United States of Europe."

In practice, the EU has already gone far towards creating a new state, although it has signally failed to create one that is honest and democratic. As Shore writes, "To most critical observers it seems quite evident that the European Community has acquired most of the characteristics of a state, however much some might wish to deny this." And, "with its single currency, its Central Bank and treaty control over money supply and borrowing, the EU takes on the powers of a sovereign state, albeit a transnational state without a democratic government." As Pascal Lamy, Delors' chef de cabinet, admitted, "The people weren't ready to agree to integration, so you had to get on without telling them too much about what was happening."

The Committee of Independent Experts reported in 1999 that fraud, cronyism, mismanagement and cover-ups were rife in the European Commission, summarising, "It is becoming difficult to find anyone who has even the slightest sense of responsibility." Shore concludes that the Report "exposed ... the extraordinary degree to which patronage, fraud and corruption ... had become established, even institutionalised, within the Commission."

Chris Shore's "Building Europe" is an innovative study of the European Union, and should be taken seriously. Shore is one of the first to jump in the post-EMU debate: now that Europe has almost completed Economic Union, what are the expectations, challenges, and impossibilities with regard to further integration? Shore offers a systematic discussion of the role of 'culture' in the European Union. How has a European identity been created, or not!, among both citizens and civil servants in Brussels? Shore turns out to be quite critical in the end. Europeanism is not strongly rooted among the peoples of Europe. And the elites in Brussels are far from what a perfect European bureaucrat must be like. He concludes that the goal of European federalism, which so strongly depends on some form of common European identity, may be one bridge too far. To conclude, Shore's informed and refreshing perspective on the actual challenges to European integration forms an important contribution to the debate. Anyone who wants to think of tomorrow's Europe may probably want to read "Building Europe", no matter if you agree or disagree with Shore's final conclusions.