Altay Kray Investment & Business Guide (Russian Regional Investment & Business Guides)

Customer Reviews:

Correction.......1999-04-20

The scale of the map between pages xii and 1 can either be 0 - 160 miles or 0 -100 km. It cannot be both since 1 statute mile is appr. 1.6 km. Consequently, it should be 0 - 100 miles (0 - ~160 km) or 0 - 100 km (0 - ~60 miles). Which is it? Thank you.

A must-read for anyone contemplating this trip........1998-05-19

Mr. Dalby has captured the spirit and reality of this "dream" trip. His advice, observations, and anecdotes are worth the purchase of this book, even if you don't plan to travel the Alaska Highway. His descriptions are great and the common sense approach is refreshing. We plan to take this trip in the summer of '99. Once we read the book, we were convinced that this trip was for us.

A book that can pave the way too a change in your life............1997-09-23

"The Alaskan Highway: An Insiders Guide" Is the most complete book that covers what to take , how to take it, where to stop, what to see, and over all how to survive the sometimes hazardous highway......I know it is what I used to start my journey to Eagle River, Alaska......I'll never forget the experience......I recommend this book and the Journey to anyone who needs a new out look on life; because the book will pave the path to the journey that will surely change your life!!!!! It did mine

Book Description

Jordan has long served as a pivot between moderate pro-Western states and radical anti-American states in the Middle East. As the United States pursues a policy of regime change in Iraq, the economic, social, and political effects on Jordan will be pervasive. In this timely and important work, David Schenker, an expert on Middle Eastern politics, examines the complex historical relationship between Jordan and Iraq and presents recommendations for U.S. policy toward Jordan. This book is essential reading for scholars of international relations and U.S. policy makers.

Book Description

“The life and adventures of Tommy the Cork, from serving as a clerk to Oliver Wendell Holmes to helping United Fruit find ways to overthrow the government of Guatamala, make for one of the most intriguing Washington books in years. Readers with a taste for the politically picaresque will seize upon it with delight.” — Harry McPherson in Wilson Quarterly

IN 1931, A YOUNG Rhode Island lawyer with middle-class, Irish Catholic roots came to Washington to clerk for Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. He had earned the highest grades ever attained at Harvard Law School and possessed a force of personality to match his intellect. A brilliant lawyer, wily political operator, and likable rogue, Corcoran would become the most important and valued strategist in FDR’s inner circle. After leaving government, Corcoran would virtually establish modern lobbying and influence peddling as we know it.

Corcoran was the first “super-lobbyist,” the first person to fully appreciate how World War II changed Washington; the first person to fully understand the symbiotic relationship between the executive branch, the Congress, and corporate America. Corcoran knew how to size people up, apply leverage, and call in — to devastating effect — the favors he liberally spread around town. Despite his lasting influence his story is little known today.

Drawing on sources ranging from FBI wiretaps to interviews with family members, Tommy the Cork traces Corcoran’s career from his early days with Holmes and FDR to his behind-the-scenes orchestration of President Eisenhower’s intervention in Guatemala. Corcoran’s life is peppered with political luminaries, including Henry Luce, Joseph P. Kennedy, Evita Peron, and Lyndon Johnson. McKean’s account also tells the story of Corcoran’s twenty-year romantic relationship with the exotic power broker Anna Chan Chennault, a champion of conservative Republican causes. Anyone interested in the history of Washington’s inner-workings and tales of political intrigue will find this story irresistible.

Customer Reviews:

Not just for the "inside the Beltway" crowd.......2004-05-07

It is somewhat surprising that it has taken this long to get a full-length biography of Thomas Corcoran, who along with Benjamin V. Cohen was responsible for much of the New Deal legislative program. After his government service, Corcoran pioneered in developing a highly influential legislative representation practice, concocting a unique mixture of law, politics and corporate America that continued until the late 1970's. The book is a fair assessment of Corcoran, covering both his virtues and his flaws. As to the latter category, the chapter on "Lobbying the Court" recounts in a dispassionate fashion the episode where Corcoran was accused of having gone over the ethical line in dealing with Justice Black on a pending case. The chapters dealing with Corcoran's clerkship with Justice Holmes, the Court Packing episode, and the drafting of key pieces of New Deal legislation are particularly effective. But there is much more of interest here as well: Corcoran's involvement with a whole cast of Washington characters including FDR, Jim Farley, Truman, Justices Douglas and Frankfurter, Eisenhower, Anna Chennault, LBJ, Nixon and Abe Fortas to name just a few. The book does a fine job in filling the gap in our political history that resulted from the absence of Corcoran getting his biographical due. The book also nicely complements William Lasser's recent biography of Benjamin V. Cohen. Corcoran and Cohen together again!

TOMMY THE CORK; WASHINGTON'S ULTIMATE INSIDER FROM ROOSEVELT TO REAGAN

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TOMMY THE CORK; WASHINGTON'S ULTIMATE INSIDER FROM ROOSEVELT TO REAGAN
David McKean
Manufacturer: Steerforth Press South Royalton, VT
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000IWSEW6

Product Description

A personal history of one of the world\'s most beautiful spots - Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada.

Book Description

Chief of Staff to the President is perhaps the most important political appointment in our nation's government. Aside from handling the myriad of day to day details that keep the White House running, the Chief of Staff is often the President's closest confidante and gatekeeper--anyone who wants access to the Oval Office goes through the Chief of Staff.President Lyndon Johnson bestrode the American political scene as a colossus of energy, ambition, and purpose. He attempted to achieve no less then the total eradication of poverty and expended every last ounce of his political capitol with Congress to pass Civil Rights legislation. And, throughout, he was--as he knew better than anyone else--being destroyed by a war he inherited, detested, and could do nothing to stop. With Marvin Watson, his Chief of Staff and most intimate adviser, finally revealing what he knows about this extraordinary figure, readers are taken, firsthand, inside the presidential life and times of Lyndon Johnson.

Customer Reviews:

In the Shadow of A Big Man.......2006-02-21

Once while visiting Alaska with my family, we saw coming out of a bar a young woman in a peasant blouse who was extremely well endowed above her waist. Later, I asked my five-year-old son what he thought about the woman. "Dad," he said, "those things were so big my little eyes couldn't even see them all."
Lyndon Johnson also was so big most eyes could not see all of him. But, Marvin Watson had as close a look as anyone outside Lady Bird and the girls.
But therein may be the only problem with this story -- discretion in telling all as long as Lady Bird is alive. Had I been in Watson's position, I also would not want to reveal what many would relish in a true tell all.
Nevertheless, you'll get your money's worth for the time Watson faithfully served his big boss in the power center of the world.

Best book on politics I've ever read........2005-04-22

Who would have thought there's such a thing as a book on politics you can't put down? Marvin Watson's Chief of Staff is quite simply one of the best two or three nonfiction books I've read this millennium. Fascinating from start to finish, the book makes presidential politics come alive, vivid even for the politically uninitiated.

Chief of Staff : Lyndon Johnson and His Presidency

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Chief of Staff : Lyndon Johnson and His Presidency
Sherwin Markman W. Marvin Watson
Manufacturer: Thomas Dunne Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OTM5HS

Book Description

The memories of the pranks, woes, and joys collected in this small volume were drawn from cadet life at The Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, VA. Here is a sampling:

Double Trouble

RB Lane, Â`75

I have two brother rats who are identical twins, Barry and Larry Lineback. When I say identical, I mean identical. I roomed with Larry for two years and it took me awhile to learn to tell them apart.

During our first class year Larry would wait for a rat to come along and head up one of the stairways in barracks. HeÂ'd get up in the ratÂ's face, flame him a bit, and challenge him to a race up the stairs to the third or fourth stoop. If the rat won the race, Larry would let him out of the ratline for the day, or something to that affect. Larry and the rat would get side by side at the bottom of the steps and they would begin the race. Larry would purposely fall behind and visions of victory and a day free of the ratline would begin to form in the ratÂ's mind. If course, and unbeknownst to the rat, Barry was waiting for him at the top of the steps. The look on the ratÂ's face upon seeing his competition at the top of the steps waiting for him was priceless.

All the proceeds of this book are donated to the VMI Museum.

Book Description

Bringing together reception history, music analysis and criticism, the history of music theory, and the philosophy of music, Beethoven Hero explores the nature and persistence of Beethoven's heroic style. What have we come to value in this music, asks Scott Burnham, and why do generations of critics and analysts hear it in much the same way? Specifically, what is it that fosters the intensity of listener engagement with the heroic style, the often overwhelming sense of identification with its musical process? Starting with the story of heroic quest heard time and again in the first movement of the Eroica Symphony, Burnham suggests that Beethoven's music matters profoundly to its listeners because it projects an empowering sense of self, destiny, and freedom, while modeling ironic self-consciousness.

In addition to thus identifying Beethoven's music as an overarching expression of values central to the age of Goethe and Hegel, the author describes and then critiques the process by which the musical values of the heroic style quickly became the controlling model of compositional logic in Western music criticism and analysis. Apart from its importance for students of Beethoven, this book will appeal to those interested in canon formation in the arts and in music as a cultural, ethical, and emotional force--and to anyone concerned with what we want from music and what music does for us.

Customer Reviews:

How to Love and Overcome Beethoven's Heroic Music.......2005-09-13

In "Beethoven Hero" (1995), Scott Burnham, Professor of Music at Princeton University and a leading Beethoven scholar, offers two complemetary approaches to the music of Beethoven's heroic period. As Professor Burham reminds us, this music consists of a relatively small body of work from Beethoven's middle period, primarily the third and fifth symphonies, the "Emperor" concerto, the "Waldstein" and "Appassionata" piano sonatas, and several overtures. Yet, for many listeners, these works have come to be regarded as the greatest achievement of Western music and, more importantly, as the paradigms by which other music is heard and judged.

Much of Professor Burnham's study is devoted to explaining the nature of Beethoven's heroic music and the reasons for its power and appeal. He finds that this music has been found by virtually all listeners to speak of the human condition in terms of suffering and struggle and the overcoming of suffering through will, persistence, and self-actualization. Thus, Professor Burnham offers an analysis of the first movement of the Eroica symphony which shows that listeners who hear this music in terms of a programatic, extra-musical interpretation (the struggles and ultimate victory of a hero) describe the work in ways essentially similar to those listeners who use more formalistic, strictly musical descriptions. (in terms, for example, of the long, ambiguous exposition, the new thematic material in the development, the horn call that begins the recaptitulation, the expansive coda). Professor Burnham then follows this discussion with his own analysis of the first movement of the fifth symphony which tries to show in musical terms how this work retains its hold over the imagination of many people.

Professor Burnham then discusses how Beethoven's heroic style became paradigmatic for all music. There is a difficult but fascinating discussion of the work of four 19th and 20th century musical theorists, A.B. Marx, Hugo Riemann, Heinrich Schenker, and Rudolph Reti, and their use of Beethoven. Broadly speaking, these theorists took Beethoven as their model, tried to determine in their various ways the structural, thematic, and harmonic patterns they found in Beethoven's music, and then made these patterns normative for considering all music. Their work, for Burnham, shows both the enormous influence of Beethoven and how his work became paradigmatic through what is essentially circular reasoning.

Following this musical analysis, Professor Burnham changes his focus and finds that Beethoven's music captures the worldview of his time in Germany which he finds rooted in Goethe, with its focus on the self and on concepts of change and becoming, and Hegel, with its focus on consciousness and transcendence. Hegelian idealism has, for the most part, lost its philosophical appeal; but its goals and values remain moving in Beethoven's music in a way that bare philosophy could never realize. This discussion and the discussion of musical theory are the pivotal sections of Burnham's book.

This leads to the second main theme of Burnham's analysis. While he does not for a moment deny the power or appeal of Beethoven's music, he argues that listeners and critics have been too ready to accept it as the sole paradigm and as the model of what music should be. Thus, he argues, the heroic style incorporates a set of musical and ethical values but, grand as they are, there is no reason for them to be exclusive. He points out that other music that does not conform to the heroic paradigm is sometimes given short shrift simply because it is "not Beethoven". Professor Burnham's prime example is the music of Schubert (p. 155, p. 167). Every reader will recognize the tendency Burnham describes and think of other cases.

The goal of this book, I think, is to encourage the appreciation of Beethoven (The book seems to me to overstate the regard in which his heroic music is held in a definitely skeptical, anti-heroic age such as our own.) but to recognize that there are other ways of hearing music and of appealing to the heart. This is an excellent goal both for specialists in music and for the non-specialist music lover. Professor Burnham writes (pp 167-68)

"[I]t is time to dissolve the terms of this our happy thralldom, to forsake the comforts of our insular domain, place our sails in the way of new winds, and face the dangerous promise of an open sea. We must look away from the Work as a world and toward the World in the work. Only then may we acknowledge that we interact with music in ways that speak of so much more than the singular experience of the heroic style ... And that is how we may best continue to honor Beethoven Hero, by staying in touch with the hero within ourselves and others, the hero whose presence is music."

The details and analyses in this book are difficult in places but its goals are clear. This book is for serious lovers of music. It will deepen the reader's appreciation for Beethoven's heroic music while weakening the stranglehold that his works have sometimes exerted on the musical imagination.

Robin Friedman

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Beethoven the Composer As Hero
Philippe Autexier
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000QHR4U6

Beethoven: The Composer as Hero (Discoveries Series)

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Don't believe everything you read :)
excellent

Beethoven: The Composer as Hero (Discoveries Series)
Philippe A. Autexier
Manufacturer: Harry N. Abrams
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0810928329

Customer Reviews:

Don't believe everything you read :).......2002-03-07

Just scanning the synopsis of this book is quite distressful. I am hoping that the book does not say something as completely wrong as "his sudden deafness at age 26." That is completely false. I am not sure about this book, but I would highly recommend Maynard Solomon's "Beethoven" It is a careful and thoughtful analysis of the man and the musician.

excellent.......1999-10-13

This is a great book about a great man, Ludwig van Beethoven. Each page has many fine photographs; most in color. It is a very well-written book which will not disappoint. In addition, the quality and feel of the paper is tops. It is nice to have color portraits of people such as Beethoven's grandfather and other members of his family, as well as Antonio Salieri, Haydn, Kreutzer, Clementi, and many of his benefactors and other personal friends, not to mention street scenes, scenes of Beethoven playing the piano as a mesmerized audience looks on, scenes of Fidelio, etc. No one who buys this book can be bored by it or have buyer's remorse.

The reader is transported back to the the late 18th and early 19th century. One thing I liked was finding out what Beethoven was doing at the precise time he wrote a certain work. In the book, Ferdinand Ries (a friend and composer) points out that Beethoven had been humming out loud during a walk in the woods. When he returned, he put to paper the 3rd movement of the famous Appassionata sonata.

This book gets an A plus.

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Beethoven Hero.: An article from: American Scholar
Peter Schwendener
Manufacturer: Phi Beta Kappa Society
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B00097MRGE
Release Date: 2005-07-28

Book Description

This digital document is an article from American Scholar, published by Phi Beta Kappa Society on March 22, 1997. The length of the article is 1512 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Beethoven Hero.
Author: Peter Schwendener
Publication: American Scholar (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 1997
Publisher: Phi Beta Kappa Society
Volume: v66 Issue: n2 Page: p301(3)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Fidelio and Leonora: The democratic hero and the female principle (The Andrew W. Mellon lectures)

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Fidelio and Leonora: The democratic hero and the female principle (The Andrew W. Mellon lectures)
Wilfrid Howard Mellers
Manufacturer: Graduate School of Tulane University
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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The hero as musician-Beethoven
Luigi von Kunits
Manufacturer: [s.n.]
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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