Arbitraje Comercial Internacional

Book Description

This sequel to our popular Canada's Best Canoe Routes offers 31 more prime paddling trips, encompassing British Columbia to Newfoundland and Labrador, and north to the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut. All described by Canada's foremost paddlers, this canoeing and kayaking compendium has it all: freshwater, saltwater, flatwater and whitewater paddling, weekend trips and epic adventures. It also features profiles of 20 noteworthy paddlers, takes the reader on a tour of the Canadian Canoe Museum, and offers up a plethora of paddling maxims by canoe guru James Raffan, author of Summer North of Sixty, Fire in the Bones, Bark, Skin and Cedar, and Wild Waters: Canoeing North America's Wilderness Rivers.

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Financial Accounting: In an Economic Context with INFOTRAC
Jamie Pratt
Manufacturer: Wiley
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Financial | Accounting | Industries & Professions | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 047000097X

Book Description

"If you've got a problem with New York City
being the capital of the world,
take it up with the Pope."

As the mayor of New York City, Rudolph Giuliani was as controversial as he was determined to revitalize "the greatest city in the world." Never one to pull punches, he did things the way they had to be done, not the way everyone else thought they should be done.

But during the chaotic aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, Giuliani's courageous actions and bold decisiveness propelled him from his place as the leader of a city under siege to the beloved Mayor of America. On that day and for many days afterward, he stood up and spoke with strength and compassion -- and for that he will be remembered by not only New Yorkers, but all Americans.

Now, in his own words, readers can experience the wisdom, inspiration, and genuine "New Yawk" attitude that have brought Rudolph Giuliani from the tough streets of Brooklyn to the carnage of Ground Zero and into the annals of history.

Download Description

"As the mayor of New York City, Rudolph Giuliani was as controversial as he was determined to revitalize ""the greatest city in the world."" Never one to pull punches, he did things the way they had to be done, not the way everyone else thought they should be done. But during the chaotic aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, Giuliani's courageous actions and bold decisiveness propelled him from his place as the leader of a city under siege to the beloved Mayor of America. On that day and for many days afterward, he stood up and spoke with strength and compassion -- and for that he will be remembered by not only New Yorkers, but all Americans. Now, in his own words, readers can experience the wisdom, inspiration, and genuine ""New Yawk"" attitude that have brought Rudolph Giuliani from the tough streets of Brooklyn to the carnage of Ground Zero and into the annals of history. "

Book Description

Newly-wed Jessie Ann Smith left Scotland in February, 1884, and traveled with her orchardist husband, John, to the south western British Columbia community of Spence's Bridge. Thirty-year-old Jessie Ann's strict Presbyterian upbringing and her training as a teacher, musician and banker did little to prepare her for the exciting life she was about to lead as a pioneer in British Columbia's fledgling ranching and fruit industry.

Her story, a love story with an historical twist, begins with her childhood in Scotland and follows her by ship across the Atlantic and by rail across the U.S.A. to the west coast of British Columbia. Her introduction to Canada includes a work train trip through the Fraser Canyon on the then under construction Canadian Pacific Railway. The young couple initially settled at Spence's Bridge where John Smith worked for orchardist, John Murray. However, after an attempt at her husband's life, they left "The Bridge" for a harsh decade of homesteading in an upland valley south of Merritt. In 1897, after the death of John Smith's former employer, the family returned to purchase and rebuild the ailing Spence's Bridge orchard.

John Smith died in 1905, partly as the result of an earlier Granite Creek mining accident. Jessie Ann Smith and her children continued working the Spence's Bridge orchard. For nearly a decade their Grimes Golden apples won top honors in shows in Canada, the U.S.A. and England. King Edward VII sought the apples of the "Widow Smith of Spence's Bridge" at a London Horticultural Show in 1909. The King? Ay, ay - no less than he,
None other than His Majesty;
His car already comes to stand
At Islington's exhibit grand,
Ingenuous to a high degree -
"I've come," he says most graciously,
"Those luscious Golden Grimes to see
Of Widow Smith's from fair B.C."
With dainty taste and polished mien
He deems them fitting for the Queen.
Forthwith he executes command
That they be sent to Buckingham.

With the aid of three of her granddaughters, Jessie Ann Smith began writing her life story in the mid-1930s. Half a century later, Murphy Shewchuk was approached by granddaughter Audrey Ward to help complete the book and it was first published in 1989. It has now been reprinted twice. The latest reprint, in July, 1998, includes corrections on an addendum on the inside back cover.

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Widow Smith of Spence's Bridge
Chuck; Lippincott, David Philyaw
Manufacturer: Industrial Computer Source
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000SJKTU4

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The tragic vision of the Left

Fascinating, flawed study of a terrorist

Her treachery resulted in the killing of two policemen

Interesting subject, badly written book

entertaining 60s social history

Family Circle: The Boudins and the Aristocracy of the Left
Susan Braudy
Manufacturer: Anchor
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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A Radical Line: From the Labor Movement to the Weather Underground, One Family's Century of Conscience

Fugitive Days

Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies

President Nixon: Alone in the White House

The Weather Underground

ASIN: 1400077486
Release Date: 2004-11-09

Book Description

When Kathy Boudin was arrested in 1981 after a botched armed robbery and shootout that left a Brinks guard and two policemen dead, she ended a decade living underground as part of the radical Weathermen underground; she would spend the next 22 years in Bedford Hills prison. In Family Circle, Boudin’s former classmate Susan Braudy vividly re-creates the radicalization of this intelligent, privileged young woman who came from one of the most prominent liberal intellectual families in America. She illuminates Boudin’s relationship with her parents --and particularly with her father Leonard, a famous leftist lawyer--and shows how Kathy, swept up in the ferment of the late 1960s, moved further and further from the Old Left ideals they embodied.

Based on extensive interviews, court documents, and Boudin family papers, Family Circle is both a rich biography of a family and a intimate window into a turbulent and fascinating time.

Customer Reviews:

The tragic vision of the Left.......2005-01-12

This fascinating book will make uncomfortable reading for committed progressives, so I am not surprised by the many negative reviews. Progressives no doubt also loathe David Horowitz's book RADICAL SON, which was a thoughtful description of the underside of the idealistic 1960s and its aftermath. FAMILY CIRCLE covers similar material and provides much food for thought.

What both books make clear is that it was not a coincidence that idealistic progressives with a particular group of personal qualities and beliefs morphed into violent domestic terrorists, despite their early idealism and desire to help make a better world.

The key elements seem to be:

(1) Legitimate, but blown out of proportion, social grievance

The terrorists who formed the Weathermen Underground: Boudin, Dohrn and Ayers and their comrades were initially motivated by legitimate issues. Their original issue was the shameful treatment of black Americans by the white American majority, and subsequently their other major focus was their opposition to the Vietnam War.

But what was the connection between the awareness of legitimate social issues and the decision to kill other human beings? The link is by no means obvious, and few individuals who shared similar outrage over the same injustices took the step of turning to violence.

(2) Family values that justify treason or violent revolt

One of the best predicters of an individual's political party affiliation is the political affiliation of their parents. This is a somewhat humiliating confirmation of Schopenhauer's contemptuous (but overly sweeping) dismissal of the idea of free will, and it turns out to be particularly important when the political behaviour involved is extreme. When an individual decides to set out to kill people and become an enemy to one's society and government, it apparently helps to have deep, subconscious confidence in the support of loved ones for those violent acts.

Kathy Boudin's parents (like David Horowitz's parents) were Communists and her father Leonard was a famous radical lawyer who defended many Communists and traitors who have subsequently, since the opening of KGB files after the fall of the USSR, been proven to have been guilty--a fact that Leonard, who was hostile to his adopted USA, probably knew when he was defending them. Tragically, Leonard Boudin went from defending Fidel Castro in the late 1950s to unsuccessfully defending his daughter Kathy in the early 1980s from charges that arose out of her participation in the violent robbery of a Brinks truck and the murders of a Brinks guard and two policemen.

So just as Microsoft founder Bill Gates' father was a prominent and wealthy Seattle lawyer, it seems that that treason and terrorism often reach full flower in the nurtured next generation.

But what were the values that these families specifically inculcated in their children?

(3) Heroic immortality and hedonism

Boudin's father was a materialist and a Communist who was flagrantly sexually omnivorious--behaviour that was well known to his family.

The great advantage of being a materialist with no belief in the after life like Boudin and her father is that one doesn't have any eternal punishment to endure for one's earthly actions. In fact, it is a very liberating philosophy.

In fact, weirdly, this is creates a direct connection between the Weather Underground and today's Islamic terrorists--the mullahs and extremist Islamic theologians goading young men and women to their deaths are pushing the functional equivalent of materialism and atheism. Ironically, there is little functional difference between killing policemen in Nyack, New York because you think that after death there is nothing at all, and blowing yourself up in an Israeli shopping mall because you think you'll spend eternity having sex with virgins.

The multi-partner sex that was practiced as part of their political indoctrination by the Weathermen Underground had the same function as the mullahs' loopy lure to suicide bombing.

Both sets of political killers expected to be remembered for their heroic acts of violence, and to either experience extinguished consciousness after years of hedonistic sex, or to be about to embark on an eternity of hedonistic sex. A truly wierd confluence of the motivations of Western domestic terrorists and Islamic terrorists.

Of course, if Islamic terrorists and materialist Western traitors and terrorists are attracted to sexual hedonism with no fear of any consequences, so are many if not most ordinary people who don't go on to kill innocent strangers. What is the final link?

(4) Grandiosity and psychopathic narcissism

Why was Kathy Boudin a convicted killer and pleasure-seeking Mick Jagger not a killer? (Boudin denies any active role in the murders, but other witnesses claim that she played the key role of persuading the police officers to put down their weapons just before the Black Panthers attacked with automatic weapons blazing).

The answer is contained in a statement that Kathy Boudin made during her ultimately successful quest for parole after 20 years' imprisonment, which was not included in FAMILY CIRCLE but is still available on the Web. She wrote,

"Sitting with young women dying of AIDS, creating a quilt for those in our community who are no longer with us, I face the deaths for which I am responsible. As I work with mothers on rebuilding their relationships with the children they left, I am overwhelmed by my own responsibility for leaving a group of children with no hope of ever seeing their own fathers again. Now I can ask: what if it were my father, my husband, or my son who had been killed or hurt? What would I feel? I understand the rage that the victims' families may feel towards me. "

Terrorists have no regard for the feelings and sufferings of the human beings they are about to maim or kill, or for the grief of the loved ones of their victims. This is a key component of the psychological make-up of psychopaths--an inability to emphathise with other human beings, or an evil pleasure from inflicting pain. Most terrorists probably do not derive pleasure from inflicting pain--although their controllers and motivators may well be psychopaths in this sense--but they are so narcissistic that the are indifferent to the pain inflicted on others by their murderous actions.

An ordinary human being may be narcissistic, but only a criminal or a terrorist is psychopathically narcissistic to the point that they are indifferent to the suffering of the people whom they kidnap, maim or kill. This is the realisation that Kathy Boudin has apparently come to through her years in prison.

Bound up with this psychopathic narcissisim is grandiosity. This is a belief that one is so special, so gifted, such a distinguished and great person that one can affect the course of history by one's daring actions--even though those actions are condemned by one's government and society. It is interesting that Boudin pursued increasingly extreme measures precisely when it became objectively obvious that her interpretation of history was absolutely incorrect--or at least it was obvious that almost all support for her interpretation had vanished.

Boudin had started out in the protest movements of the 1960s, and she lived underground during the 70s as the US made steady progress on civil rights and the Vietnam War ended. It became clear that whatever public support for the violent Left had evaporated, and Weathermen founders Dohrn and Ayers had even turned themselves in to the authorities and escaped punishment. But Boudin persevered through the early 80s, getting mixed up with Black Panthers who were little more than pimps and drug dealers, and it was a pure criminal act that Boudin was involved in when she abetted the violent robbery of the Brinks truck and the murders of the two policemen.

Grandiosity was an element in the mental outlook of Boudin--she was so sure of her greatness, or at least the greatness of her cause, that she couldn't accept the plain evidence of reality all around her.

Taken together, FAMILY CIRCLE and RADICAL SON reveal very interesting truths about the ultimately tragic vision of the most extreme wing of the idealistic Left, despite the originally good intentions and the many sacrifices of some its most committed practitioners.

Fascinating, flawed study of a terrorist.......2004-10-27

I enjoyed this study of the colorful, unconventional Boudin family. I agree with other readers that there was too much space given to the father, Leonard Boudin, an intense, civil rights attorney, who specialized in representing the radical left. So it's not surprising that his daughter, Kathy Boudin, became a radical protestor of the Vietnam War and a loud, snarling member of the Weather Underground. While other members of this pathetic group finally threw in the towel and turned themselves into the law after careers as bombers, killers and trouble-makers, Kathy Boudin stuck it out. You read in horrified fascination how she became a key member of the killers who murdered two police officers in a foiled Brinks truck armed robbery. Even behind bars for 21 years, she played the role of wronged martyr. I remember during the sixties, when the Weather Underground was at its peak of fury. My college roommate dubbed them, The Marx Brothers of Terrorism. He hit the nail on the head. No one knew really what these rich, wealthy white kids were protesting. None had ever worked anywhere in their lives. Even when they supposedly went underground, their wealthy parents and friends supported them and gave them safe houses. Yet, you caught occasional glimpses of them on television as they shrieked and cursed and acted like lunatics. In their own pathetic little reality, they dramatized themselves as great revolutionaries who would foment a nation wide revolution to destroy America's values. No one knew what they wanted to replace them with.

Her treachery resulted in the killing of two policemen.......2004-06-29

I enjoyed reading this book very much, and recommend it to all readers. It was a fascinating look at Kathy Boudin and those radical student leftists known as the Weather Underground who declared war on America in protest to the Vietnam War.

Kathy Boudin's treachery resulted in the killing of two policemen, for which she served 22 years in prison. That may not matter to the leftist readers who have given this finely written book low ratings. Ignore their hateful rantings, and judge for yourself how a bright young woman of privledge could make such a bad choice to pursue terrorist goals.

Kathy left her baby with a sitter to drive a getaway van full of Black Panthers who robbed a Brink's armored truck, and actually expected to return on time to pick up her child! Instead, she was captured after the two policemen were killed, and her child was abandoned.

The picture on p. 353 of one of the Weathermen stomping on an American flag gives the reader an indication that these radical leftists have no remorse for their past behavior.

There is ample material on the internet concerning how leftists were able to get Kathy released on parole in 2003. Her victims left behind families that will never forget her treachery.

Interesting subject, badly written book.......2004-05-06

This book has all the flaws of a poorly written biography - unsubstantiated claims to understanding characters' thoughts and motivations, lots of irrelevant details, broad generalizations, inferences treated as facts, and amateur-psychologist diagnoses. Perhaps with serious editing, this could be a decent book. As it is, learning about the people and the times keeps me going, though my annoyance at the author's careless approach to a serious story makes me want to stop. I am not surprised Kathy Boudin did not cooperate.

entertaining 60s social history.......2004-04-22

This story of a leftist/progressive family and their radical daughter is a microcosm of the intertwining social and political trends that helped shape the 60s. Nice insights into family dynamics and generational friction, the search for "authenticity" (black panthers, bomb-making) by white, middle class kids, and a glimpse of what life was like among the radical fringe. For a West Coast take on the same period, look at Peter Coyote's "Sleeping Where I fall." Both explore the confluence of the personal and the political in a volatile era.

The political person.(Family Circle: The Boudins and the Aristocracy of the Left)(Book Review): An article from: New Criterion

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The political person.(Family Circle: The Boudins and the Aristocracy of the Left)(Book Review): An article from: New Criterion
Paul Hollander
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from New Criterion, published by Thomson Gale on April 1, 2004. The length of the article is 1823 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: The political person.(Family Circle: The Boudins and the Aristocracy of the Left)(Book Review)
Author: Paul Hollander
Publication: New Criterion (Magazine/Journal)
Date: April 1, 2004
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 22 Issue: 8 Page: 89(3)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

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A fantastic read!!

Art of Cherishing

real life

A really great book

Great read!

Corvette Odyssey: The True Story of One Man's Path to Roadster Redemption
Terry Berkson
Manufacturer: The Lyons Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1592282946

Book Description

It was a car fanatic's nightmare. While Terry Berkson was visiting his newborn son at the hospital, his '63 Corvette-a gift from his late father-was stolen off the streets of Brooklyn.
Berkson didn't have theft insurance, and he couldn't get over the loss. Detectives wrote his car off. It's been chopped up for parts, they told him. He would never find it. His wife and his sister-in-law told him he was crazy. But he didn't give in-he posted reward notices and cruised neighborhoods where he thought a stolen Corvette might pop up.
In his incredible search, he was aided by an unlikely coterie of understanding officials, sympathetic car thieves, as well as repo men, bus drivers on the lookout for him, and desperate cases who wanted to help him in unexpected ways, like the woman who claimed she had seen the car, and who was wearing almost nothing when he showed up to talk with her. He plunged into the secretive and dangerous world of "chop shops," where cars are cut down to nothing and sold for untraceable parts. He lurked in the dim corners of New York's most secluded hiding places, like "King Kong's Cave" in the Bronx, where stolen cars are abandoned and set on fire. He learned how professional thieves plan and pull off grand theft auto, and he finally located his car-but what happens when he does is both terrifying and exhilarating.
An original blend of philosophy-why do we love our cars the way we do?-the nuts and bolts of crime, urban adventure, and the underbelly of America's car-crazed culture, Corvette Odyssey is sure to find a place on the shelves of auto fans and lovers of a fine tale well told.

Customer Reviews:

A fantastic read!!.......2007-02-20

While visiting our local bookstore, I had the good fortune to come across Terry Berkson's book: "Corvette Odyssey" on the shelf of the transportation section. Being an old car enthusiast, the title caught my eye. After I read the first few pages, I was hooked. I sat right there in the store and read it from cover to cover, then I bought the book so I could read it again at home. I found it easy to relate to the emotions and attachment evoked in Mr.Berkson by his beloved roadster. A fantastic read!

Art of Cherishing.......2006-04-10

As a woman who has never learned how to drive it feels odd to be touting a book titled Corvette Odyssey. Yet it's so much more than a story of a lost and found car. Yes, we're astonished by Berkson's miraculous recovery of his Corvette after his frantically obsessive search for it. But foremost, for me, the book is about values which, to our great detriment, no longer seem as important as they once were: a sense of connection to one's roots (for Berkson it's Brooklyn and Upstate New York)and to family (notwithstanding his delinquency during the search), and a relationship to possessions which is now foreign to us. In our mad rush for the newest, the most state of the art, the trendiest, we no longer know how to cherish what we have. We learn from Berkson's book the art of cherishing--not only a vintage Corvette, but the connection to his personal history which it represents. An inspiring read for anyone!

real life.......2006-02-21

There's a great story at the heart of this book, but what really makes it compelling is the way the author places the story in the context of a whole life... all the various connections with family and friends, and even with people who begin as total strangers but get pulled in some way into Berkson's quest. I could have read this in one sitting but preferred to dole it out over the course of three nights just to savor the experience.

A really great book.......2006-01-11

This is a straight from the heart book about a man's quest to find his stolen car and almost loses his family. A really great book about how possessions can be symbolic of what's missing in one's life, and how we should instead be grateful for the people who are present in our lives.

Great read!.......2005-09-19

This book is a terrific read. Not only for Corvette lovers (I highly recommend in that case) but for all who love their cars. I think we can all relate to the many feelings discussed in the book which is one of the reasons it is so captivating and hard to put down. I told my husband about it and he read it in one night (and he is not a reader - but he liked this one!). Don't wait to get this one - you'll enjoy each page!

Corvette Odyssey The True Story of One Man's Path to Roadster Redemption

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Corvette Odyssey The True Story of One Man's Path to Roadster Redemption
Terry Berkson
Manufacturer: The Lyons Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Perfect Paperback
ASIN: B000UEUZBU

Book Description

The early decades of American popular music-Stephen Foster, Scott Joplin, John Philip Sousa, Enrico Caruso-are, for most listeners, the dark ages. It wasn't until the mid-1920s that the full spectrum of this music-black and white, urban and rural, sophisticated and crude-made it onto records for all to hear. This book brings a forgotten music, hot music, to life by describing how it became the dominant American music-how it outlasted sentimental waltzes and parlor ballads, symphonic marches and Tin Pan Alley novelty numbers-and how it became rock 'n' roll. It reveals that the young men and women of that bygone era had the same musical instincts as their descendants Louis Armstrong, Elvis Presley, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, and even Ozzy Osbourne. In minstrelsy, ragtime, brass bands, early jazz and blues, fiddle music, and many other forms, there was as much stomping and swerving as can be found in the most exciting performances of hot jazz, funk, and rock. Along the way, it explains how the strange combination of African with Scotch and Irish influences made music in the United States vastly different from other African and Caribbean musics; shares terrific stories about minstrel shows, "coon" songs, whorehouses, knife fights, and other low-life phenomena; and showcases a motley collection of performers heretofore unknown to all but the most avid musicologists and collectors.

Customer Reviews:

Bounce!.......2004-01-29

American music didn't get hot suddenly in the 1950's with the arrival of Rock 'n' Roll. It didn't get sexy when Jazz provided the soundtrack to hi-jinx in the back seat of a Model A Ford in the 1920's. American music, with serendipitous blend of African and Celtic influences, has been scaring church folk and turning good girls bad since the 19th century. David Wondrich, with great wit and careful research, tells the quintessentially american story of our funky popular music.

Blowin' Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics

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Incredibly Pedantic and Poorly Written
Jazz Critics' Critic
Like Dancing About Architecture
entertaining read

Blowin' Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics
John Gennari
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0226289222

Book Description

In the illustrious and richly documented history of American jazz, no figure has been more controversial than the jazz critic. Jazz critics can be revered or reviled—often both—but they should not be ignored. And while the tradition of jazz has been covered from seemingly every angle, nobody has ever turned the pen back on itself to chronicle the many writers who have helped define how we listen to and how we understand jazz. That is, of course, until now.

In Blowin’ Hot and Cool, John Gennari provides a definitive history of jazz criticism from the 1920s to the present. The music itself is prominent in his account, as are the musicians—from Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington to Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Roscoe Mitchell, and beyond. But the work takes its shape from fascinating stories of the tradition’s key critics—Leonard Feather, Martin Williams, Whitney Balliett, Dan Morgenstern, Gary Giddins, and Stanley Crouch, among many others. Gennari is the first to show the many ways these critics have mediated the relationship between the musicians and the audience—not merely as writers, but in many cases as producers, broadcasters, concert organizers, and public intellectuals as well.

For Gennari, the jazz tradition is not so much a collection of recordings and performances as it is a rancorous debate—the dissonant noise clamoring in response to the sounds of jazz. Against the backdrop of racial strife, class and gender issues, war, and protest that has defined the past seventy-five years in America, Blowin’ Hot and Cool brings to the fore jazz’s most vital critics and the role they have played not only in defining the history of jazz but also in shaping jazz’s significance in American culture and life.

Customer Reviews:

Incredibly Pedantic and Poorly Written.......2007-04-28

I bought this book based on hearing a NPR interview. Although Gennari sounded distant and aloof, the interviewer did a nice job of making the book sound interesting. Aside from tidbits of history not in some of the other books on jazz, the bulk of the book contains the most convoluted prose I have ever come across. Here is one of innumerable sentences that boggle the mind:

"As Baraka aligned himself with the community-oriented goals and methods of the black power mjovement, drenched his writing and public performaces in the rhythms and tonalities of the black urban vernacular, and hoisted him self up as an arbiter of black authenticity, his quest for what Werner Sopllors has called a 'populist modernism' involved a tricky effort to reconcile collective political imperatives with the individual aesthetic freedom he prized as both a poet and a champion of the jazz avant garde."

Good grief, that sentence contained 81 words! Where was the editor? Since the first couple of chapters are fairly digestable I am guessing that the editor simply ran out of gas and conceded the last five chapters of the book. I am also guessing that the interviewer did not read more than the first or second chapter of the book.

Admittedly, his research is exhaustive but unfortunately his style is exhausting.

At the risk of using double negatives, this is not a book you can't put down.

Jazz Critics' Critic.......2006-07-27

Mr. Gennari spent many years writing this extremely well documented book, one that needed to be written. Generally he is on the mark with his history of and comments about most of the major critics who've written about "America's classical music." He spends the bulk of his time on the expected figures, including Rudi Blesh, Leonard Feather, Nat Hentoff, Martin Williams, Whitney Balliett, Ralph Ellison, Dan Morganstern, Stanley Crouch, and Albert Murray, but the amount of space devoted to John Hammond, who, although a major player as talent scout and record producer for jazz of the 1930s and 1940s, is not a name that rolls off one's lips as a critic.

Gennari's one major misstep is the section in which he features Ross Russell and Albert Goldman. Russell, the owner of Dial Records who recorded some of Charlie Parker's greatest sessions, write a novel based upon Parker's life and a full blown biography as well. Both efforts remain highly controversial and hardly qualify Russell for as much attention as he receives here. And Goldman, another controversial writer best known for sensational bigraphies of Lennie Bruce and Jim Morrison is at best a marginal figure as a jazz critic.

In spite of that one major lapse, a highly recommended study of jazz criticism.

Like Dancing About Architecture.......2006-07-11

Thelonius Monk once said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture. If you nevertheless enjoy reading about jazz as much as listening to it, this is a great read. On the other hand, if you think jazz critics are a bunch of navel-gazing wannabes who use music as a platform to expound their pet social or political views, you may yet find this book interesting. It's not a breezy book by any means, but Gennari succeeds in not getting caught up in academic discourse-speak. "Liminal" appears only once, books and magazines aren't "texts," and they're read, not "interrogated." Whew!

Gennari starts with Leonard Feather and John Hammond, two critics with serious conflict of interest issues, both from a business perspective and from the standpoint of their strong social beliefs. Feather largely overcame his, while Hammond gave in to his temptation to judge a record by whether its label allowed unions in its pressing plants. Genneri spends much of his book focusing on the post WWII critics: Martin Williams, Nat Hentoff, Ralph Gleason, Gene Lees, Whitney Balliett and Marshall Sterns. He devotes a chapter to the radicals Amiri Baraka and Frank Kofsky and closes out with the new kids, Stanley Crouch, Gary Giddins and Albert Murray. There are some odd digressions: the cult of the (mostly British) record collectors; the Newport Jazz festival; Dial records producer and author Ross Russell's posthumous obsession with Charlie Parker.

There is something of a leftward slant. While the radical leftists such as Baraka and Kofsky are dismissed when they eventually wander away from music criticism for pure politics, Baraka is taken seriously for his work up to about 1964-65. On the other hand, hard conservatives such as Richard Sudhalter and James Lincoln Collier simply get the back of the hand. Gennari doesn't wear his politics on his sleeve, however; up to the last chapter you really have to read between the lines to get a sense of his drift. There is, however, a blast near the end when he slams the conservatives for their assertion that jazz historians have inflated the role of black musicians and ignored whites.

As I said above, this is a fascinating book for anyone who enjoys reading about jazz and an indispensable item for those interested in the history of jazz literature.

entertaining read .......2006-07-05

This is a very interesting book. The topic essentially concerns the perception and canonization of jazz among a select group of critics. This process of the canonization of jazz intersects with perennial questions about the nature of art, America, democracy, and race...lots of fuel, as you can see, and the author gets a lot of mileage from these questions.

The book hits a few speed bumps along the way (I thought, for instance, that discussions about gender and jazz were stretched and the discussion of the psychosexual motivations of jazz collectors was overwrought). And the author's even tone throughout is lost at the end as he doesn't hide his contempt for certain 'conservative' critics But, overall, a very fine book and highly recommended.

The Cat on a Hot Thin Groove: The Complete Collection of 78rpm Artwork from the Legendary Record Changer Magazine

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The Cat is Back
Beyond Fantastic

The Cat on a Hot Thin Groove: The Complete Collection of 78rpm Artwork from the Legendary Record Changer Magazine
Gene Deitch
Manufacturer: Fantagraphics Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1560975261

Book Description

A visual feast of swingin' cartoons for jazz lovers. On the long road to becoming an Oscar-winning animation director, Gene Deitch became an intense jazz fan. At the age of 21, he discovered The Record Changer, a jazz collector's magazine filled with fanatical, scholarly, and purist essays about jazz as well as listings of hard-to-find jazz albums. Every jazz swinger in the '40s was called a cat (as in "cool cat," derived from the West African word "Katta," a human), so Gene Deitch created a cartoon feature for Record Changer titled "The Cat," which quickly became a fixture at the magazine. He also started drawing the covers, which graced almost every issue from 1945 to 1951 along with "The Cat." Deitch's stylistically virtuoso images exquisitely embodied the essence of jazz and became a visual paean to the joy of collecting and appreciating jazz.

In the 1940s, jazz was a vaguely disreputable musical genre and Deitch's visual embodiments of the music acquired a cult; to this day, his original Cat cartoons are bought and sold on the internet.

Fantagraphics Books is proud to collect all of Deitch's Record Changer covers and "Cat" cartoons in one coffee-table, landscape-format art book, reproducing his covers in the same gorgeous colors in which they first appeared as well as the black-and-white Cat cartoons and a commentary by Deitch—who later went on to become an award-wining animator as the Creative Director of CBS/Terrytoons, where he created Tom Terrific and Mighty Manfred the Wonder Dog for The Captain Kangaroo Show, as well as many other animated features, including a legendary stint on MGM's "Tom and Jerry" series. Fully illustrated throughout; 90 pages color.

Customer Reviews:

The Cat is Back.......2003-06-19

Great 1940s comics that capture the world of the jazz fanatic circa 1945-1950. Deitch's artwork is clever, original, somewhere between Virgil Partch and Harvey Kurtzman -- far above the amateurish efforts one associates with fanzines. Anyone familiar with the loonier aspects of record collecting will find much amusement in these cartoons (The Cat berates one guy searching a huge pile of records with, "That's the 'A' master which is relatively common!"). Deitch also drew some interesting covers, reproduced here in full color. Anyone into vintage comics, records, and/or jazz will dig this.

The packaging is a bit overkill. The width of the book is huge, but there is a lot of white space on the inside pages. A smaller size would not have detracted from the artwork, and would have made this a more affordable book. Also, nobody seems to have proofread the copy, as there are quite a few typos.

Beyond Fantastic.......2003-06-06

This book gets seven stars. At first, I think I thought it had something to do with Mad Magazine, like Spy Vs. Spy. What I found was a goldmine. Rarely do I see books dealing with geeking out on something. Gene Deitch clearly loves Jazz Music. This book documents a dope artist, blossoming into greatness through an interest in an outsider sound. His honest comments on obsesive geekdom, as well as race relations, are appreciated. A super cool gift, as well as a beautiful, beautiful book. the OilCan highly recommends.

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New York Hot
G. Marsh , and G. Callingham
Manufacturer: Chronicle Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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New Hot Discography: The Standard Directory of Recorded Jazz

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New Hot Discography: The Standard Directory of Recorded Jazz
Charles Delaunay
Manufacturer: Criterion
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Cool Blues and Hot Jazz Guitar

Manufacturer: Alfred Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

Cool Blues & Hot Jazz Guitar is the perfect introduction to the classic era of jazz guitar as epitomized by Wes Montgomery, Kenny Burrell, and Pat Martino. Topics covered include: Dominant 7th chord Forms and Substitutions * The Jazz/Blues Progression * Minorizing the Dominant * Single-Line Soloing * Jazz Phrases * Scale and Arpeggio Substitutions and much more!

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Beautiful, Filled with Sweetness and Soul
Romance, Fire & Desire

Too Hot to Cool Down
Terrance Cummings
Manufacturer: Stewart, Tabori, & Chang
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1556705107

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Beautiful, Filled with Sweetness and Soul.......2000-06-12

Great book to share with others. The lyrics are beautiful and the illustrations a great images of "lovin". This book pays homage to jazz legends and the sweetness of love. This book leaves you with a warm feeling. I highly recommend this book. It's like church - good for the soul.

Romance, Fire & Desire.......2000-05-13

Beautiful illustrated to lyrics with true meaning that reaches to depths and essence of your soul.

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Hot Food, Cool Jazz
Simon Goh , Terry Durack , and Jill Dupleix
Manufacturer: New Holland Publishers Pty Ltd (AUS)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD

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AND THE BEATS GO ON

Hot Jazz Special

Manufacturer: Candlewick
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Bebop Express

ASIN: 0763623083
Release Date: 2005-02-03

Book Description

Grab your porkpie hat and groove to the swinging artwork and syncopated text of this introduction to nine of the hottest jazz artists of all time.

Join young Henry at the Body & Soul Cafe and enter a world of hipsters, flipsters, and finger-poppin' daddies—where to jump is to jive and to bop is to be! Some of the greatest names in jazz are about to hit the scene, ready to blow those blues away. Meet Jelly Roll Morton, Django Reinhardt, Walter Page, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, Billie Holliday, Charlie Parker, and Duke Ellington, all on one stage for a night you'll never forget. Jonny Hannah has created a one-night special of red-hot rhymes and bold poster-style art that captures the rhythms and feel of jazz for newcomers and fans alike. Musicians' biographies at the end offer suggested listening for savoring the true flavor of each cat's style.

Customer Reviews:

AND THE BEATS GO ON.......2005-02-27

Jazz aficionado Jonny Hannah has produced his first children's book, and it rocks! Boldly illustrated and propelled by a lilting rhyming text his story takes young readers along with Henry for an unforgettable night at the Body & Soul Café. This is the place, where some of the greats perform. It's a spot where "Good food and great coffee are the order of the day & here, cool, live tunes in the evening help you blow your blues away."

Jelly Roll Morton plays piano like no one else, Louis Amstrong heats up the beat, and Gene Krupa blisters the skins. Hannah even tells you what required dress is for the Body & Soul Café - two-tone shoes, pin-striped, double-breasted suits, and a good hat (beret or even a bowler).

Perhaps for the first time young ones will be introduced to Charlie Parker "It's played all crazy by a cat called bird," Duke Ellington, and more. A brief biography of each of the performers is included as well as a recommendation for one of their greatest hits. For Billie Holiday? "I Cover The Waterfront," of course.

Hannah, who runs "The Cakes & Ale Press," a publisher of hand-printed remembrances of some of music's one-and-onlys, has an obvious love and respect for jazz - this shows and glows on every page.

- Gail Cooke

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Hot Air, Cool Music
Bruce Turner
Manufacturer: Quartet Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0704324598

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